Forces rehabilitation centre

[GloriaMumble]

Did I just hear that right on the Today programme... local residents are objecting to a house being used for families to stay near their injured/ill armed forces relatives who are at a rehabilitaion centre on the basis it will lower the tone of the area - I'm

www.ssafa.org.uk/HeadleyCourt.html

I knew about this before R4 Today piece this morning. Unbelievable small mindedness.

Appears main objections will be A) noise and traffic - yes, because I am sure the families staying there will be having parties every night and zooming here there and everywhere, rather than focusing on their actual priority of spending time with their (seriously injured) loved ones

Second objection apparently is that they will become a terrorist threat. WTF? Suggest if they are that paranoid, living in the area with so many military bases (Sandhurst, Pirbright, Aldershot etc) probably not such a good idea.

Report on R4 this morning stated the house is currently 7 bedroomed, with the planning application to reduce this to 6 with max occupancy of 12. Hardly Blackpool seafront is it? Still, at least if planning application turned down, house remains in original use - so free to be purchased by a big family, preferably with very noisy teenagers, loud hobbies, lots of unruly pets, loads of illegally employed domestic staff coming at all hours, fat exhausts on all their vehicles and a penchant for holding frequent, drunken parties.

I am, you may detect, somewhat aggrieved at this. Yes, I agree, everyone has a right to exercise a right of complaint. Personally though, naive as it sounds, I would expect people to make a balanced judgment between their grievance and the overall impact and not follow a course of action which is entirely self motivated, mostly financial and seemingly petty and irrational. Hmffppph. SBM flounces off.

They got permission!

ah, you beat me to it! Good on Mole Valley Council.

It is good, but OTOH the people there sound so horrible it seems a pity to inflict them on anyone, let alone families in need of support.

ggg - so well put.

It was good to hear on the radio this morning that the application is going through.

I was shocked by the objections...

One of the residents was on the Today program saying words to the effect that Ashtead was a beautiful place but it was not for everyone! ie these people (visiting their injured relatives)did not deserve to be there. He was a WWII veteran too. Seemed to be saying basically that he had worked hard to be able to afford to live there and didn't want to share it...

It took my breath away.

One objector in the paper was a nurse - she said she didn't see why she had to 'be forced to move' if this went ahead!

For theman, have a look at this list of concerns and proper responses. You'll see that the description of the place as a "hostel" is unnecessarily pejorative. And in any case, the place had previoulsy been used for a child mining service with no complaints from other residents.

I'm glad that the planning committe had a change of heart and apporved it unanimously. With the heat of all the publicity, they must have realised that they couldn't be seen to pander to vested - and prejudiced - interests.

Well, local authorities, health services and the Ohome Office have a bugger of a job to get permission to open residentials for mentally ill people, the homeless and other disadvantaged groups - usually due to local objectors.

It would be lovely to read of such 'outrage' in those circumstances.

as i said at the start i was only defending their right to object and that it was up to the planning services to make the decision based on all the facts.
if the description of the building as a hostel was inaccurate i apologise i was only taking it from someone who posted on this thread before me.
"With the heat of all the publicity, they must have realised that they couldn't be seen to pander to vested - and prejudiced - interests."

if that is the only reason the council took such a decision they did it for the wrong reasons, such a planning application should be dealt with objectively rather than based on public emotion.

Heard this on R4 yesterday. I was quite ed, but tbh, not at all surprised.

Actually theman, I agree with you: the planning decsion should be made on objective grounds. However, I had got the imporession, previoulsy (and enhanced by comments on this thread), that the authoirty was going to reject the application purely on the basis that they had had a number of objections from vocal and articualte residents, rather than looking objectively at the objections and whether they were valid.

That's why I made the comment about the publicity - that they were forced to go through due process, and if they had refused it, they would have had to give valid reasons, which, becasue of the spotlight on them, they realised that they were not able to find.

Although I was a bit shocked to hear that the Planning Officers, whose job it normally is to weigh up the objective reasons why a development should be allowed/refused, recommended a refusal .

I can only believe it was due to the weight of local protest, regardless of the facts of the case. Anyway, very glad it was put right when it went to committee.

oh no i accept that and as i've said from the outset i was not saying that the project should be rejected automatically but simply that i would have protested such a move in my area and that these local residents were entitled to protest it aswell and that i didn't see why posters here felt they shouldn't.
we'll never fully know on what basis the decision was made now as one side will argue that the reversal of the decision based on media outcry proves that they were originally pandering to the well off minority, and the other half will say it proves that they went back on their original and correct decision because they wanted to avoid bad publicity.

I have to say that I hope that in similar circumsntaces, I would be like jura and be one of those actively supporting such an application.

I live in a leafy suburb (not quite as leafy as Grays Lan), where many fo the large houses have been divided into two properties (I live in one such property).

It is entirely feasible that one of the undivided properties could be bought up for a hostel/half way house, but since I have worked in the health service in the past, and know how difficult it can be to find sutiable propertie, I wouldn't object. yes there might be increased traffic, but our road is incredibly wide and quiet, so that wouldn't be an issue. The biggest problem in our street is the boy racers, you will literally use it to drag race (one ended up on its roof on the pavement last month) - so a few other cars might impede them!

my leafy suburb butts up against a more densely popualted area (where ds goes to school). Ironically, there is a from of NIMBYism there too, where I know of people objecting to new builds of flats purely becasue they are "luxury 1 and 2 bed flats" and therefore those new residents won't have an interest in the needs of the local community (primary school etc). Personally, I think it's great that there is new life coming into the area and some of those "yuppy" young porfessionals buying these new flats may well go on to have kids - and will have an interest in the continued viability of the local community. There is definitely a form of inverted snobbery at work there.

The thing I found amazing was that the property had previously been used as a nursery/childminder's. As such, this would have involved considerable traffic as parents dropped off and picked up children and any objections based on the increased level of traffic are rendered somewhat suspect (especially if the rehab.centre run a shuttle minibus to counter the complaints about traffic).

And will someone please remind me where it says that every Englishman has an inalienable right to enjoy ever-rising house prices?

It all comes down to a bunch of NIMBYs protesting about unsightly cripples. Stuff 'em.

so pleased common sense prevailed here

What worries me about this is how families staying there are going to be treated by the locals.

Apparently 90% of the locals were for it, so there shouldn't be too much of a problem.