The application sought a change of use from a dwelling and two holiday lets (Use Class C3) to a children's care home (Use Class C2) for up to six children aged 8 to 18 with learning disabilities, on Station Road in the village of Torksey, Lincolnshire. The holiday lets would become short-break units, the double garage would become a games room, and the operator described between six and ten staff on duty with waking night cover. The whole site lies within Flood Zone 3a.
The client, a local resident, was clear that the objection was not to the care of children who need it, but to this proposal in this location on the information submitted. Their concerns were the distance from schools and services, the safety of the road and nearby open water, flooding, and the effect of a year-round staffed operation on neighbours along Station Road. They asked Planning Voice to test the application against the development plan and national policy.
Policy S23 of the Central Lincolnshire Local Plan (2023) says residential care accommodation should be located in a settlement in levels 1 to 4 of the settlement hierarchy, and that a location elsewhere must rest on a demonstrable need. The application offered only the general statement that it would meet an identified need for looked after children. It did not refer to Lincolnshire County Council's published sufficiency strategy or market position statements, or explain why any need could not be met in Lincoln, Gainsborough or Saxilby. We set out why a general county-wide demand for placements is not a need identified away from those settlements.
Even if need had been shown, Policy S23 requires access to services to be demonstrated for the likely occupants, and NPPF Policy HO9 expects residents to reach frequently used services easily and safely. There is no shop or school in the village, nothing was said about secondary or specialist education, and the operator's own document described services as being within a short drive. The application also contained no management plan, and no assessment of the risks to children from the pond on the Village Green and the nearby drainage dykes, which NPPF Policy P5 requires to be addressed.
NPPF Policy F4 says a site-specific flood risk assessment should accompany all development in Flood Zone 3a, and none had been submitted. We drew on the applicant's own Environment Agency data, which showed modelled flood depths of up to 2.14 metres in an extreme event, and on the Agency's objection recommending refusal. All of the children's daytime rooms would be on the ground floor, the only measures offered were flood alerts and a later flood plan, and children with learning disabilities would depend entirely on staff in an emergency.
We challenged the claim that the use would be no more intense than the existing one, which compared a theoretical maximum occupancy with a year-round staffed operation including handovers, night-time arrivals and professional visits, with no noise assessment or transport statement. The parking layout was undimensioned and gave no justification as required by Policy S49. The documents also contradicted each other on staffing and overspill parking, one operator document referred to a different property, and the two holiday lets would be lost without the marketing evidence we considered Policy S43 requires.
West Lindsey District Council refused planning permission on 2 November 2026 for two reasons. First, the Council treated the site as an open countryside location outside the Tier 1–4 settlements, found that a demonstrable need for that location had not been robustly justified, and concluded that occupants would not have adequate or easy access to local services, contrary to Policies S1 and S23 and NPPF Policies S5, HO9 and TR3. Second, the site is in Flood Zone 3 and no site-specific flood risk assessment had been submitted, contrary to Policy S21 and NPPF Policies F4 and F7. Both reasons reflect central points of our objection, which sat alongside the Environment Agency's objection and those of other local residents.
Related guidance: Traffic and Parking · Noise · Midlands
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