Green light to extend Derbyshire care home - despite concern over flooding issues

Plans for a 16-bed dementia unit extension to the Ivonbrook Residential Care Home in Eversleigh Rise, Darley Bridge, close to Matlock, have been approved by Derbyshire Dales District Council.

This was the second time the plans had been to the council, with councillors rejecting the first iteration of the scheme in August last year.

However, the applicantion proved successful at the second time of asking with a tweaked version of the scheme, moving it slightly away from neighbouring homes and shifting car parking around to the opposite side of the current building, avoiding further disruption to residents.

This followed a lengthy and complex discussion about the impact of flooding and the proposed drainage plans put forward by the applicant. Residents spoke about how existing issues in the area caused their homes to flood on a regular basis, including last weekend, and feared this would worsen.

Planning officials on the council advised that it was not the applicant’s responsibility to solve the area’s flooding problems, just what is within their ownership and that their plans specifically do not provably worsen the situation.

Meanwhile, management at the care home spoke about the urgent need for more care home beds, specifically those catering for residents with dementia, and said the expansion would also support the future longevity of the current facility.

Hannah Shakespeare, a resident of Willow Grange, opposite and downhill from the site, told the meeting: “When it rains heavily water from the Ivonbrook car park cascades down Ivonbrook Close and this overwhelms all the existing flood mitigations at my house, including the soakaway and consequently we get flood water in our property.

“This is a real existing problem today, it doesn’t just happen during a one in-20 flooding event, it happens several times a year and with increasing frequency and indeed it happened on both Saturday and Sunday.”

Council officials said there had been no response from Derbyshire County Council, the lead local flood experts, in relation to the tweaked application. They said a potential “hydrobreak” aimed at collecting and slowly dispersing flood water was proposed as an improvement by the applicants and that officers would work to ensure drainage issues were suitably catered for.

Chris Whitmore, the council’s head of planning, said officers had “reasonable confidence that development should not make the situation worse”.

Cllr David Hughes said: “Yet again I think we are underestimating the impact of flooding in the Derbysire Dales and the negative contribution it makes to people’s lives and we should be very careful when we make planning decisions where there is a possibility of flooding, particularly when residents are already affected by flooding from that particular site.”

Mr Whitmore responded: “From my perspective, it is unreasonable to require the developer to attenuate surface water from the site to prevent flooding of neighbouring properties where that already happens. I mean how far do you go with that? Do you want them to alleviate the whole of the flooding problems for the whole of Matlock?”

Councillors eventually approved the plans unanimously, with extra conditions to ensure flooding and drainage issues are appropriately and comprehensively managed.