Hindhead care home refused after GP warning
A care home proposed for Hindhead was rejected after GPs warned councillors it would damage healthcare services in the area.
Waverley Borough Council’s planning committee refused permission for the Hamberley care home last night (October 12) despite being told it was the only realistic option for the site between Devil’s Punch Bowl and Moorlands Lodge care home.
Some councillors shared concerns about the care home’s design, with one saying he’d seen “Premier Inns that look better”.
The developer, prepared to make a multimillion pound investment in the Portsmouth Road site, argues a high dependency end of life care home with 24-hour nursing care is much-needed.
However, Grayshott Surgery said there is already a surplus of care home beds in the area.
Councillor Kika Kirylees (Farnham Residents, Farnham Shortheath and Boundstone) said: “You’re getting to a point where there’s going to be a place like Hindhead which you run through, because it’s the place where everybody dies.”
Grayshott GP Dr Edward Bell, also speaking on behalf of Procare Community Services who provide district nurses, said many local care homes are running with temporary bank and agency staff because they are unable to recruit.
He said: “A new care home would be directly competing with the existing services for what scarce resources there are staff-wise in the area, having a potentially detrimental and catastrophic effect on the services.”
Douglas Bond, speaking on behalf of the applicant who proposes an ensuite wet room for each of the 74 rooms, said: “The sad truth is that a large proportion of the existing supplier is of poor quality.”
He said nearly 60 per cent of homes in the area lacked ensuite facilities. “That means up to an average of eight elderly residents having to share the same bathroom; that cannot be right,” he said.
“The care home has also been designed to be the first Covid-19 secure scheme in your borough with numerous unique Covid response design features incorporated.”
However Dr Bell said 23 per cent of the ensuite bedrooms in the area’s care homes were not occupied.
He said it would be better placed in an area which has a deficit of beds, because people prefer to move into care homes close to their home.
Councillor Sally Dickson (Farnham Residents, Farnham Hale and Heath End) said: “I am a bit concerned that we’re building a home that is going to be too expensive for the county council to send patients to.”
Councillors argued there was a greater need for affordable housing, but conventional housing is not allowed in the location within 400 metres of the Wealden Heath Special Protection Area (SPA) where there are vulnerable species of birds.
Councillor Simon Dear (Conservative, Haslemere East and Grayswood) said: “I think this is a profoundly depressing application.
“We’re being asked to consider a warehouse for the economically and physically inactive, to go with all the other warehouses for similar types of folk in the area.
“Now I’ve got nothing against those folk, I may well be one one day. But what this area needs is housing for young people. But because Natural England won’t let us, we have to compromise.”
Natural England only removed an objection to the application on the basis that residents would be too immobile to take recreation on the SPA, and said they must not be allowed pets.
Councillor Jerry Hyman (Farnham Residents, Farnham Firgrove) referred to Natural England’s approach as “dodgy”, saying an assessment that did not contain any numbers of birds was “not a lawful, appropriate assessment”.
Impact on healthcare services is “not a material planning consideration” and committee members voted 10-2 to refuse the application on the basis that the scale, mass and design of the building would “result in a cramped development that failed to take the opportunity available to improve the character of the area”.
Cllr Dear said: “You have all seen Premier Inns that look better than this.
“What we are face with here is the most extraordinarily dull, boring, tedious, uninteresting building it’s been my displeasure to see as a planning application for a very long period of time.”