Royal London have been granted planning permission for a permanent car park at their Alderley Road campus, which is situated in the Cheshire Green Belt.
The Northern Planning Committee approved the application from Wilmslow's largest employer to build a permanent car park with 126 spaces on the site of a temporary car park.
It was approved on the grounds that the economic benefits of the proposals, the lack of better alternatives and the history of numerous temporary permissions were considered to provide very special circumstances that justify inappropriate development in the Green Belt.
The car park will be located within a field to the north west of the site and accessed from the main complex. The temporary car park it replaces has been there since 1997, following numerous temporary permissions, is finished in gravel and accommodates approximately 100 vehicles.
One of the conditions imposed is that lighting can only be used from 6am to 7pm.
Prior to this latest application Royal London applied to build a permanent car park with 90 spaces on a grassed area at the front of the Alderley Road campus, adjacent to the existing Lodge car park. This planning application has now been withdrawn.
Earlier this year Royal London announced plans to create an additional 450 new jobs in Wilmslow and accommodate the new roles by building new, modern office accommodation on the eastern side of their campus. The business currently employs around 900 full time staff in the town and wants to increase the number of staff in Wilmslow to around 1,350.
The Royal London site has been identified in the Local Plan for mixed use development, delivering 75 homes, 17-24,000 sq m of employment space and a hotel.
Comments
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Here is their attendance record:
http://bit.ly/1L1XeOx
(obviously some of them have not been in place for the full 12 months but....).
There have been no Declarations of Interest posted on the CEC website since 2014.
I don't suppose any of them will read this, so, if you are in the wards they represent, perhaps you could ask them why they approved this application on your behalf.
Last time I checked Royal London's site had over 10k sq m of vacant office space for rent; they have been displaying an "office space to rent" sign continuously for the 17 years that I have lived here, why would they need any more?