PLANS for a care home for people with complex needs on the site of the former Mac Multi Activity Centre look set to be turned down.
Exemplar Health Care wants to bulldoze the existing buildings on the site off Goodall Street in Macclesfield to make way for a three-storey, 35-bedroom care home with access, 24 parking spaces and landscaping.
Macclesfield Town Council is supportive of the scheme and feels it is a good location for the proposed care home, which would cater for adults of all ages living with complex mental health needs, dementia, neuro-disabilities including brain injuries, Huntingtons disease, severe autism, Parkinsons disease and physical disabilities including cerebral palsy, spinal injuries and musculoskeletal disorders.
In a report to next week’s meeting of the northern planning committee, Cheshire East’s planning officer says the application states 12 full-time jobs will be created covering management and head of department jobs.
There will be up to 100 job positions once fully at capacity, though initially 40 posts will be created mostly in nursing and health care assistant roles.
When the home is at full capacity there will be 35 staff on site during the day and 22 during the night.
The planning officer’s report states: “The principle of development concerning loss of a long-term vacant community and leisure facility is considered to be acceptable, as is the erection of a specialist care home facility within Macclesfield principal town settlement boundary where new residential developments are targeted towards.”
But it adds: “It is considered that the proposals represent overdevelopment of a constrained site surrounded by existing dense mixed-use forms.”
The report says the site layout fails to provide an ambulance or delivery and collection bay in an appropriate location to serve the development.
It is also considered the proposal will have detrimental impacts on some neighbours due to overbearing development, loss of privacy and sunlight because of the height, volume, scale, siting and orientation of the building.
Fourteen residents have objected to the scheme, and one has emailed the council in support.
The application has been recommended for refusal on the grounds it results in the overdevelopment of a heavily constrained site; it would result in overbearing impacts and loss of privacy to areas of existing properties on Swettenham Street and Pearson Street and there is insufficient information to ascertain the impact of the development on off-site trees.
The planning meeting takes place at Macclesfield Town Hall at 10am on Wednesday, October 2.
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