The owner of the former care hotel on Barrow Road has finally submitted a planning application to convert the premises into a house of multiple occupancy, after a change of use request was rejected by the All-New-Yet-Unimproved Somerset Cuonty Council last year.
Alamo Housing had previously claimed that planning permission was not required as the property had previously been a HMO for old people, and had instead attempted to subvert the planning system by asking for a Certificate of Lawfulness to be issued. ANYUSSC disagreed.
Having failed with that approach, the company has now submitted a proper planning application with drawings and everything, detailing the 37 rooms, 10 parking spaces and a 38 space bike rack.
The applicant has stated that the property has been unused since the original care hotel closed in 2022, however this is not the case as Alamo Housing got around the rules by letting rooms out to ‘Property Guardians’, thereby renting out the rooms without the need to provide a decent standard of accommodation. Property Guardians are generally put into a building to ensure it is secure and are given a licence to occupy which can be terminated at any time without the need for the Landlord to follow the conditions of a normal tenancy agreement. The former care hotel is currently full to bursting with ‘security staff’.
In an attempt to appeal to the green credentials of the BeFuddleds at ANYUSSC the application notes that, whilst the usual number of parking spaces for a property with this many residents should be much higher, by not giving the option of a parking space this will reduce car usage and this comply with ANYUSSC’s climate pledge. In reality, this will mean that residents who can’t park outside the house will put additional pressure on the surrounding streets, as they need to park their vehicles somewhere.
The application also includes data to support the loss of a care hotel, detailing that there are already a great number of care hotels in the area and converting the property into an HMO will not adversely affect the provision of care spaces. An interesting argument when considering the recent applications from Beaufighter House and the Old Convent, which both claim there is a huge need for care accommodation in the area.
Barrow Road residents previously objected to the scheme claiming that Alamo Housing planned to use the property to house illegal aliens and that they did not want to see little green men wandering around an area so close to Smalltown Posh. Even worse was a suggestion that the rooms be let to Chernobyl-by-Sea workers.