Despite a town’s huge shortage of care home places, councillors are being urged to allow the closure of an existing care home and its conversion to flats.
Charing Healthcare wants to close its Vale Nursing Home in Maidstone and to convert the building to 11 flats, after adding two extensions.
The company said the layout of the building was making it unviable to run, with access difficulties making it inappropriate for residents with mobility issues.
It has been a care home for 25 years.
The home, which is on the corner of Willington Street and Otterbourne Place, currently has 24 rooms, capable of catering for 27 residents, mostly with dementia, as three are double rooms.
The company says that since Covid it had become increasingly difficult to fill the double rooms as KCC was no longer prepared to allocate clients to shared rooms.
However, a viability report accompanying the application has not provided any detail on occupancy rates.
In the council’s recently conducted Local Plan Review, its Strategic Housing Market Assessment found that there was a need for an additional 1,228 residential care bed spaces in the Maidstone borough.
Charing Healthcare has three other care homes in Maidstone and said it would work “to ensure a smooth transition for residents to move into other care homes and would allow ample time for this to happen.”
There have been 13 objections from neighbours with many concerned about parking.
The applicants intend to provide 12 parking spaces, but this falls short of the 16 required under the Vehicle Parking Standards of the Kent and Medway Structure Plan 2006:
Furthermore, the 12 spaces will only be achieved by converting the existing grass verge in front of the care home - which is in the applicant’s ownership - to parking spaces.
The proposal is for six one-bed flats, four two-bed flats and one three-bed.
The council’s planning officers nevertheless conclude that “it seems reasonable to assume that future occupants would not comprise families with children”.
The application proposes no affordable housing, contrary to the council’s Local Plan policy which requires some affordable homes on every site providing more than 10 dwellings.
Officers say that evidence had been provided showing that with affordable housing the scheme would not turn an acceptable level of profit. However, that financial viability appraisal has not been made public.
The application will be one of the first to be determined by the council’s new planning committee following the local elections at the start of the month.
Officers are recommending they approve the proposal when they meet in the Town Hall next Thursday.
Find out about planning applications that affect you at the Public Notice Portal.
Details of the application can be found on the council’s website under reference number 23/503025.
