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Concerns over care home plan
CONTROVERSIAL plans for a new 45-bed dementia nursing home are set to go before East Riding of Yorkshire Council's planning committee on Monday.
The Methodist Homes Agency (MHA) is planning to build the care home on the site of the now-demolished Beechwood House behind St John’s Avenue, which was left to the agency by the owner of the house.
Residents in the area were initially in full support of the development, believing it would alleviate problems with anti-social behaviour and groups of youths who were using the derelict site as a meeting place.
However, since the MHAs announcement of a new care home in 2008, residents have become increasingly concerned that the site will be overdeveloped, with a building which is too large for the site and no appropriate access considered.
Also, a seven-foot tall, spiked metal fence which is shown as part of the plans, which have not yet been approved, has already been erected around the site.
Pete Masters, whose home on St John’s Avenue will be overlooked by the bedrooms of the new care home, said: “MHA have bulldozed this through, without proper consultation with the residents who will be affected, apart from the farce at the Revelstoke Hotel in 2008 when most of the people just came from outside the area to book rooms at the home.
“The residents of the home will be spending a lot of time in their bedrooms, and the windows will be overlooking all the properties on St Johns Avenue.
“Local councillors have asked for further footprints of the site to be provided, which weren’t.
“They’ve got a bog-standard plan and they are just going to drop in a completely inappropriate building for the site.
“I would not like my mum in there, some of the residents on the ground floor are going to be staring out at a wall or fence six feet away from them.”
"Estate agents have told us that our houses could lose 10,000 to 20,000 in value because of the way they have designed the building.
Barry Young, who lives on Melbourne Avenue, which will be the new access road for the care home, said: “The access on Melbourne Avenue isn’t going to be sufficient for emergency vehicles to get in and out.
“We have large vans and trucks that belong to residents parked here on an evening, making it difficult to even get a car through.
“Anyone can see that this road isn’t suitable and there is not going to be room on the street for extra parking if there isn’t enough in the plans for the care home.”
Ward councillor Geoff Pickering, who raised the concerns of residents to East Riding of Yorkshire Council’s planning committee, said: “We are very supportive of the development, we just think that the plans are not good enough.
“There are a number of other MHA developments around the country which are perfectly acceptable to their local surroundings, but these plans seem to be an off-the-shelf solution.
“We are receiving information from local emergency services telling us that the access road is not sufficient, yet we hear from a central command that there is not a problem.
“In a development such as this, where residents of the dementia home live in secured accomodation, it makes it very difficult for them to get out of the building quickly in an emergency.
“If it takes longer to get an emergency vehicle down to the site, it will make it an even more serious issue.”
Nobody at MHA was available to make a comment at the time of going to press.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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