Agenda and minutes

Any information received after the agenda has been published, relevant to the Applications on the agenda to be considered by the Committee, will be published here.

Apologies for absence were received from Councillors North and Sylvester. 

At this point Members must declare whether they have a disclosable pecuniary interest, or other interest, in any of the items on the agenda, unless it is already entered in the register of members’ interests or is a “pending notification “ that has been disclosed to the Solicitor to the Council.

Members must also declare if they are subject to their party group whip in relation to any items under consideration.

There were no declarations of interest.

The minutes of the meeting held on 19 March 2013 were approved as a true and accurate record.

The application site was approximately 0.47 hectares in area and comprised a vacant single storey building and associated car parking and access road. The building was previously used by 'Best Deal 4 Baby' providing opportunity for the exchange of unwanted baby items albeit this use was never permitted and the lawful use of the building was for B1 offices.  In addition, part of the site area was formed by garden land associated with No.5 Newark Avenue, a residential dwelling. 

The site was located within a predominantly residential area, with residential dwellings enclosing the site to the north, south and east.  There was a variety of built form in the surrounding area, with a mix of size and style of dwellings along Newark Avenue, Eastfield Road and Derby Drive. To the north of the site was modern backland development, comprising 4 no. flats.  To the south-west of the site was an established children's day nursery (Class D1). 

The application sought planning permission for the demolition of the existing building and bungalow (No.5 Newark Avenue) and construction of a new two storey medical centre (Class D1) comprising:

-            8 no. consulting rooms;

-            3 no. treatment rooms;

-            2 no. Healthcare Assistant/Phlebotomy rooms;

-            4 no. rooms for District Nurses, Health Visitors and District Midwife;

-            Ancillary office and staff accommodation; and

-            Pharmacy (100 square metres of floor area)

The total gross internal floor area of the proposed surgery extended to 992.7 square metres.  In addition, the proposal included improvement to the existing vehicular access, provision of 55 car parking spaces (28 of which resulted from the change of use of part of the garden associated with a dwelling) and associated landscaping. The proposed new accommodation would provide replacement facilities for four GP practices located in the surrounding areas - Welland, Dogsthorpe, Parnwell, Burghley Road/Church Walk.

The proposal had been amended following refusal at Committee of application reference 12/01429/FUL.  This application was refused for the following reason:

            R1  The proposal provided a level of car parking on site which was less than that which was considered necessary to serve the scale of development, even taking into account the anticipated mode of transport of staff and customers visiting the site. Whilst some overspill parking could take place on street, such was the level of the shortfall in on site parking, that highway safety and the free flow of traffic on Newark Avenue was likely to be compromised. The proposal was therefore contrary to the provisions of Policy CS14 of the Peterborough Core Strategy DPD (2011) and Policies PP12 and PP13 of the Peterborough Planning Policies DPD (2012)  which sought to ensure that new development did not have an unacceptable impact on the highway network and provided appropriate and deliverable parking provision.

The current application sought to address the above reason for refusal by increasing the level of parking proposed on site from 41 spaces to 55 (an increase of 14 spaces).  In order to provide this  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.