A PLANNING application has been submitted to demolish a family pub and restaurant and replace it with a 70-bed care home and 42 retirement apartments.

The applicants, KCS Developments, Greene King Brewing and Retailing Ltd, Willowbrook Healthcare Developments Ltd and McCarthy Stone Retirement Lifestyles Ltd, have made an application to Bradford Council’s planning department to demolish The Generous Pioneer in Ilkley Road, Burley-in-Wharfedale, to make way for the development.

The 70-bed care home would be a three-storey building and the 42 retirement apartments would be housed over two separate three-storey buildings. The application also includes 60 car parking spaces and landscaping.

In a design and access statement, the applicants state: “The proposed scheme incorporates two buildings with appropriate car parking, set within a quality soft landscaping scheme. The overall concept is to deliver a quality residential development that maximises this important site and integrates with the surrounding area.

“The buildings are positioned to address the existing frontages and to give an attractive street scene to the development.

“The layout allows for vehicle movement while basing its primary function on pedestrian movement. The layout encourages ease of access to all areas creating fully inclusive buildings. The layout incorporates the existing site access point and includes separate surface car parking for both buildings with bin storage areas and appropriate turning for servicing the site.

“The development has been influenced by the evaluation of the site, including the existing sewer easement, landscaping, and topography of the site.

“The existing landscaping that surrounds the site is retained together with a proposed high-quality landscaping scheme that is co-ordinated with the buildings use and layout.”

The applicants say the site “provides a unique opportunity to provide specialist residential accommodation which is not present within the current settlement”.

“The proposal incorporates a mixture of living spaces for the potential residents,” the design and access statement says. “The care home provides single ensuite bedroom accommodation for the elderly or less abled person with a strong emphasis on creating a community with the shared spaces within. The apartments provide a mixture of one and two bed apartments designed to meet the needs of older occupants.”

In summary the application states: “The scheme provides many functions:

* It satisfies the brief in terms of providing a high-quality building;

* Economically it provides regeneration for the area by introducing well-known quality brands and providing much-needed specialist accommodation to the area;

* The design sympathetically respects its local setting with its use of form and good quality.

“We strongly believe that the scheme and design approach being promoted will successfully deliver a high-quality development which respects and enhances the qualities of the local character and its place in Burley-in-Wharfedale.”

The online planning application has attracted several objections from village residents, including concerns the development overloads the site and is an imposing and unacceptably large development at the entrance to the village. Others say the village is already overcrowded and the present services struggle to cope.

One resident states: “The surgery is already overworked and the addition of further elderly care home residents on top of 500 more houses and families will be an unacceptable drain on all village resources.”

Visit planning.bradford.gov.uk and search reference: 21/04079/MAF for more details.