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Taxpayers lumped with £6k bill after developer appealed council’s nursing home decision

By Joe Locker, Local Democracy Reporter

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Gedling taxpayers have been lumped with a £6,000 bill after a developer successfully appealed the council’s decision to reject its plans to turn a nursing home into apartments.

Gedling Borough Council turned down plans to convert Ernehale Lodge Nursing Home in Arnold into 19 apartments at a planning committee meeting in September last year.

Councillors argued the development required 16 car park spaces, rather than the 13 that had been proposed by developer Waseem Shafiq, of Arnold Point Limited.

They said adequate off-street parking was therefore not provided, and feared the development would “cause unacceptable issues of on-street parking to the detriment of highway safety”.

However Mr Shafiq appealed the decision to the Government’s Planning Inspectorate, which sided with him in a decision published in April.

The inspector said the committee failed to substantiate its position that the shortfall of three parking spaces is an issue of such weight as to be singularly decisive, and that it had instead based its decision on “vague, inaccurate assertions not supported by objective evidence”.

It was also agreed the council would have to pay any fees incurred by the developer in relation to the appeal.

In a response to a Freedom of Information request, submitted by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the Labour-led authority says £6,000 was awarded to the developer.

At a planning committee meeting in July, where the requirement to award costs was noted, Cllr Paul Wilkinson (Lab), the committee’s vice-chair, said: “We got ourselves into an unnecessary mess with this.

“The committee received clear advice from the officers, including the advice there was the potential for costs to be awarded against us, but in its wisdom the committee decided to ignore that advice.

“I was one of those that supported the recommendation to grant, not happily, but because I could see there were no valid planning reasons to refuse the application. I was very wary of the danger of costs being awarded against this council.

“Very unnecessarily, this has cost us a significant sum of money, and I think it shows we need to take great attention to some things we are being told by officers, and when we are given clear guidance on something, and the potential consequences, we need to take note of that.”

Speaking to the LDRS previously, Mr Shafiq added: “The financial penalty now imposed on the council could have been avoided entirely — those funds could have been directed towards essential local services.”