Plans for care home at former Midhurst Grange site refused

Property developers Montpelier Estate planned to build a 62-bed care home at the former Grange site in Bepton Road.

Submitted in May, the plan received heavy criticism from the town council and residents alike.

Similar plans for a 69-bed care home were withdrawn last year.

At a meeting of the South Downs National Park planning committee on Thursday, October 13, members agreed the building was ‘excessively large’ and would create an ‘overly cramped form of development’.

In part of the committee’s reasoning for refusing the plans, director of planning at SDNP, Tim Slaney, wrote: “The siting, scale, and design of the building would have an overbearing and unneighbourly impact upon neighbouring properties adjacent to the northern site boundary and would also result in an unacceptable loss of their privacy and outlook. Furthermore, bedrooms in the north facing elevation of the building would have a poor standard of amenity due to their orientation, outlook, and insufficient direct daylight and sunlight.”

The site has been empty since for eight years when the original Grange Centre was bulldozed. In that time there have been plans by Chichester District Council to sell the site to a supermarket chain, three attempts to do so failed, and the plug was also pulled on plans to build a public swimming pool at the site.

Chair of Midhurst Town Council, Carol Lintott, objected to the plans as a member of the public, and said: “As a local authority disposing of a prime site in the centre of a town, I am disappointed that, in the seven years the site has been empty, CDC [Chichester District Council] have failed to secure a purchaser who can provide a solution for this site that is acceptable to the majority of residents and businesses of Midhurst.”