Trust to appeal against planners’ nursery refusal

6^th May 2004

The West Suffolk Hospitals NHS Trust is to appeal against this week’s decision by St Edmundsbury Borough Council’s planning committee to refuse permission for a nursery for the young children of hospital staff.

The trust has been stunned by the decision of councillors, which flew in the face of advice from their planning officer, and is taking the unprecedented step of appealing to the Secretary of State for planning to overturn the decision.

Steve Moore, the trust’s director of facilities, who made a presentation to the committee said that he was staggered by the debate and comments made by councillors who voted 8 to 3 against the proposal.

“We are bitterly disappointed,” he said. “I thought we had done everything that had been asked of us in this proposal but the councillors seemed unaware of it and would not take any notice of their officer when he tried to put them right.

“We are very grateful to the three members of the committee who supported us but as for the others, they seem to have lost all sense of reason.”

Mr Moore said that the committee ignored 250 letters of support that had accompanied the trust’s application and would only accept 25 letters which had been sent directly to the planning department. The application had received no objections from people living close to the hospital.

Answering the grounds on which councillors decided they would refuse the application Mr Moore said:

“There will be no impact on car parking as the nursery will be used by members of staff who are already parking on the site because they work there. We will have to take out four spaces where the nursery will be built but will create eight new ones. In the last year we have built about 260 new spaces.

“The council’s recent decision to impose costly pay and display charges on the Hardwick Heath car park next to the hospital and to put double yellow lines in Barons Road will have far more impact on pressure on car parking here.

“We could easily negotiate the exact position of the drop off area to the nursery. It’s a piece of fine-tuning that might be expected, not a reason for refusing the whole scheme.

“The design is fit for purpose and has been used in many other hospitals in the country. The building will be timber clad and will have little visual impact. No specimen trees will be affected by it.”

Mr Moore said he took great exception to comments that the trust was embarking on piecemeal development of the Hardwick Road site and that the nursery was an inefficient use of land.

“We have spent £100,000 in the last two years compiling a comprehensive site development plan for the next decade which we delivered to the council last November. It took until the end of March for us to even get an acknowledgement. We have been working closely with officers, and councillors have been up here and shown around yet the members of the planning committee seemed totally ignorant of the fact.”

Mr Moore said that the refusal threatens the future of the 96-place nursery, which was first proposed in 1999. The trust has been granted £170,000 from NHS Workforce Development Confederation which is keen to see child care facilities built to help with the recruitment and retention of staff. This money, which should have been spent is at risk of being diverted to another trust.

“The whole emphasis is on making it easier for people to work in the NHS and child care provision is seen as a key element to attract and retain members of staff. Everyone is in favour of this nursery, except those eight members of the planning committee. It beggars belief,” said Mr Moore.

The nursery is a partnership between the trust and a private provider. Mr Moore said that among the other issues created by the refusal is the trust’s ability to keep its partner interested in the scheme.

“Without them we cannot do it,” he added.

Notes:

Among supporters of the nursery are local MPs, the NHS Workforce Development Confederation and Suffolk County Council’s child care planning team who acknowledge that there is an under provision of nursery places in the area.

The nursery is proposed to be used by babies and infants aged up to five in term time and to provide a holiday play scheme for children up to 14 in school holidays. The 96 places will be offered first to members of West Suffolk Hospital staff with any vacancies being made available to other NHS workers in the area.

At the weekend Prime Minister Tony Blair said he recognised the need for properly facilities for the under fives and pledged support for them as part of his manifesto for a third term of office.