Residents against care home plans
Green Pastures
Residents in the Bath Road and Park Road area of Banbury are fighting to retain the period feel of their neighbourhood.
The inhabitants of the distinctive Victorian houses are unhappy with preferred designs for a new care home to be built in their midst.
The proposed brick building will replace The Hawthorns, an elderly people’s residential facility run by the Christian Green Pastures Nursing Home on Oxford Road.
A group of residents is dismayed that efforts to persuade Cherwell District Council planners of the need to adopt a dessign more compatible with the surrounding properties have fallen on deaf ears.
“We are not against the idea of the home; it’s the look of the building and the fact that there is not enough parking,” said Suzanne Willson of Bath Road.
“We have seen the plans and it seems the urban planner at Cherwell has stripped out anything that would make it blend in.
“It’s too big, it dominates the road and the design is out of context. They have made allowances for 14 parking spaces for staff and family of 60 residents. Park Road will lose six spaces for their entrance and residents feel it is inevitable parking will overflow in Bath Road, Park Road and Queens Road.”
“We’re already in competiton with the college for our parking spaces,” she added.
“We are told the urban planner doesn’t want a ‘pastiche’ of a Victorian building in that corner but we think what she likes is so awful! It has no matching windows, no dormers, a flat roof line and a huge arched entrance. We are in a conservation zone but that corner isn’t.”
Anthea Speich of Green Pastures said: “We have been working closely with the planning department since we bought the land in September 2011. We very much want to build a home which will fit in with the architecture in the Bath Road area. After public consultation we have reviewed the design in order to incorporate more of the distinctive Victorian features of the area. Our plans will be in the public domain, on the Cherwell District Council website, for viewing.”
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Friday 24 May 2013
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