Councillors reject care home project for fears of Marlborough becoming a “geriatric town” swamped with cars

Marlborough is in danger of becoming a geriatric town of imported elderly people with no plans to provide homes for younger people if more care homes are allowed to be developed.

And it will also become a town sleep-walking into a future jam-packed with cars that have nowhere to park unless maximum rather than minimum provision is made in any future projects.

The warnings came from Marlborough town councillors on Monday when they unanimously rejected multi-million pound plans for a 64-bed “care and dementia home” to built together with 28 assisted living units on Wiltshire Council’s old depot site on the Salisbury Road.

The project — from Beechcroft Developments Ltd and Porthaven Care Homes — follow the sale of site by Sainsbury’s in the wake of their aborted plan for a new supermarket.

The planning committee is recommending that Wiltshire Council refuses permission for the scheme on the grounds of over-development, inadequate parking and what were described as “ecology issues”.

The latter referred to the fact that the site, still in need of major decontamination from Wiltshire Council’s rubbish dump and diesel tanks still there and the very nature of the land, originally built up to accommodate Marlborough’s former railway station.

“There is a major concern that we seem to have people coming in at all angles to build care homes and nursing homes,” Councillor Margaret Rose, vice-chairman of the planning committee, told councillors.

“If we are not careful we are going to become a geriatric town.  We would lose all our young people because we haven’t made any provision for them.”

And the Mayor, Councillor Guy Loosmore, who joined a site visit that morning, raised the lack of adequate parking on the site, where there will be a workforce of 80 that will double when the daily shift changes.

“We are sleepwalking into an area where we have more and more development in Marlborough and very little parking,” he protested.   “Where are 80 staff cars going to go in Marlborough?  There isn’t much space left.

“We have to stand firm and demand that we have the proper provision of car parking not just the minimum.  The scheme needs some modification to achieve that.  Without it, I think this town will regret any positive decision for this scheme in the future.”

“We as a council need to fight now as a corporate body that ensures that everything that goes on in this town makes more than adequate provision for parking and the traffic issues that ensue.”

Councillor Mervyn Hall, who has asked to see the drawings for widening the access to the site from traffic dominated Salisbury Road, said he remained dissatisfied and called for additional parking onsite.

Councillor Richard Allen agreed and pointed out that the sale of the site had probably been long delayed by the fact that there was significant decontamination work to be done on the council’s former waste tip and old diesel tanks at the rear of the site.

“That’s why we have seen it empty for so long,” he said, adding that the high cost of making the site safe might make it more suitable for a affordable housing project rather than care homes.

“This particular plot was built up to accommodate the railway. What we don’t know is what it was built on. So we don’t know just how robust it will be to take a development of housing.”

Councillor Noel Barrett-Morton, who also visited the site, joined in the opposition to the scheme.

“I am very concerned about the impact this proposal would have on the town,” he declared.  “It will effect the infrastructure of the town in particular our overloaded sewage system, our over-stretched medical facilities.

“This proposed development would merely importing elderly people from outside the area. I  will not be supporting this application.”

And Wiltshire Councillor Nick Fogg, who moved the committee refuse consent, referred to the failure of the current planning system which does not allow the lack of support infrastructure to be taken into consideration.

“The idea of setting up a second medical practice to accommodate this risky development seems to me  absurd,” he added.  “It is over-loading the infrastructure.  But we have to find reasons on planning grounds – and they are inadequate parking, over-development and doubts about the ecology of the area.”