Plans to put up agricultural workers in former Bognor care home refused

The Royal Bay Residential Home in Aldwick Road was closed by regulators in March 2019 due to serious safeguarding concerns.

Pro-Force, a recruitment company specialising in providing workers to food, agricultural and horticultural businesses, then applied to Arun District Council for a temporary change of use for the building.

Late last week its application to use Royal Bay to house 80 seasonal agricultural workers for a period of 12 months, was rejected.

According to council planning officers there are ten properties already registered as HMOs (house of multiple occupation) in the vicinity of the site, supporting around 58 people in total.

They felt the 80 workers and two live-in staff would result in a ‘substantial increase of population in an already densely populated area’.

Their report also suggests the proposed use was ‘incomparable’ to its former use as a care home and was ‘materially different’.

Problems with on-street parking in the surrounding road network were already described as ‘severe’, with the development expected to add to these pressures.

Proposals detailed how workers would be accommodated in a combination of single and double rooms, together with larger rooms for three to four occupants, with shared shower facilities and self-catering kitchen facilities.

Indoor facilities, which include a large lounge area with pool table/football table, would remain closed during Covid-19 restrictions.

Since the plans featured only a small area of private amenity space in front of the property, officers felt this ‘would not provide a secluded, quiet and tranquil area which the character of private amenity space should provide’.

They added: “The development seeks for approximately 82 persons to occupy the building whilst providing little to no usable amenity space of private value.”

Officers also considered the level of activity associated with the amount and intensity of development, combined with the site’s proximity to nearby residential properties, would result in an adverse level of harm that is both ‘significant and demonstrable’.

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