Eight-bedroom Horsham home to be converted into supported living flats

The application from Active Prospects for Acacia House, in Manor Fields, Horsham, was given the nod by the planning committee on Tuesday (June 6).

A spokesman for the charity, which supports around 300 people each year with learning disabilities, said the house would remain ‘an ordinary home in an ordinary street for ordinary people’.

As well as the self-contained flats, the conversion will include an office and WC for the four staff who are expected to support the residents during the day, with two staff taking over at night.

Eight letters of objection were received with concerns ranging from highways safety, on-street parking, water neutrality, noise, overdevelopment and changing the demography of the area.

But officers recommended approval, believing the conversion would provide a net gain of three units towards the council’s land supply and would have ‘no substantive amenity impacts’.