A charity looking to build an MS Therapy Centre on land off Bradley Stoke Way has made a U-turn over the proposed arrangements for vehicular access into the site.
In plans approved last year, the Moonstone Appeal said it would construct a new ‘left in, left out’ access road into the site from Bradley Stoke Way. This arrangement was consistent with conditions imposed on an earlier planning application following opposition from local Councillors and residents over proposals for the site to be accessed from Wheatfield Drive.
In a new planning application for a ‘respite care centre for MS sufferers and their carers’ that would sit alongside the MS Therapy Centre, the charity says it has had to revise access arrangements for the site:
Unfortunately due to the presence of an underground [oil] pipeline along the northern boundary of the site, between the site and the carriageway of Bradley Stoke Way, it is not viable to develop an access into the site in the location proposed in the previously consented applications.
The move is likely to spark renewed opposition from residents, Councillors and the Governors of the nearby Wheatfield Primary School, all of whom have previously raised objections to any proposals that involve accessing the site from Wheatfield Drive.
There may also be some disappointment over the proposed use of the second building on the site as Wheatfield Primary School and local residents had expressed the wish that a pre-school nursery might be provided.
Complications caused by the presence of the underground oil pipeline were anticipated in a resident’s consultation response to the previous planning application, in which it was claimed that to divert it would cost between £150k and £200k. Planning officers at South Gloucestershire Council acknowledged the comment but said that it was a matter between the applicant and the owner of the pipeline (Esso) and could not influence the granting of permission.
The charity has previously said that it needs to begin work on construction of the MS Therapy Centre by Spring 2010 in order to satisfy conditions imposed on it by already-agreed funding sources.
Consultation on the latest planning application runs until Monday 29th March.
Yet again the residents of wheatfeild drive get shafted with parking and planing all site traffic will use the road as well as the people that use the centre cloging up a already conjested road they should use the land as a carpark for the school so they stop parking on our driveways and blocking us in our own homes and now when they open that place we will get blocked in all night as well as in they day
I wish your viewers to know that Wheatfield drive was constructed originally to a standard that would allow for access to this land within the masterplan.