New bid to extend Dudley care home after neighbours object

The planning application would see 18 new bedrooms added as part of a first storey extension at the Coppice Residential Care Home in Dudley Wood Road, Dudley.

Ashgrove Care Homes, which runs the 18-bed Coppice Residential Care Home and adjacent 31-bed Ashgrove Nursing Home from the Dudley Wood Road site had an application for an extension with 20 rooms rejected by Dudley Council last year.

The council said the work would result in a loss of privacy for neighbours from overlooking.

The local authority’s planning officers also said that not enough parking spaces had been provided.

Ashgrove Care Homes said its new application, which follows the one rejected in February last year, addressed the concerns of its neighbours and the council’s planners.

The extension to the single-storey building, which is now called Coppice Residential Care Home in the new application, would be built as far away as possible from the boundary with homes in neighbouring Spring Meadow Road, according to the application.

The height of the extension would be reduced and windows would be angled away from homes in Spring Meadow Road.

A total of five more parking spaces would be provided totalling 25.

Neighbours in Spring Meadow Road had already complained a year ago that the single-storey part of the care home was up against their garden fences and they were already suffering from a loss of privacy and the bigger extension would block sunlight.

A statement included with the new application by Ashgrove Care Homes said: “It is considered that significant weight should be given to benefits of this scheme which would help to address the identified need for additional elderly person accommodation, which can be provided within an established and well-run setting, the additional economic benefits of providing additional employment in the local area and the overall highway safety betterment that will be provided to the existing car parking situation.”