A disused Yate nursing home is to be converted into flats – but unhappy owners of the private road behind could block future occupants from reaching its rear car park.

Willow Cottage Nursing Home on Station Road closed in 2018 after the Care Quality Commission (CQC) rated it inadequate and the council stopped it from taking any new residents.

Developer Sats Ahluwalia has been granted permission to convert the building into nine flats and an office, despite concerns over parking and traffic from residents and Yate Town Council. 

A South Gloucestershire Council planning committee gave consent for the work, which will see the three-storey building with a two-storey rear extension turned into six three-bedroom apartments, two two-bedroom flats and one one-bedroom apartment. 

But committee members took some convincing before voting five to two on November 14 to allow the development.

They heard some of the 18 parking spaces required by council policy can only be reached via a private road and were told the council cannot force the owners to permit trespassers.

Access to private land is a civil matter not a planning issue, and therefore lies outside the jurisdiction of the council, a planning officer said.

Councillor Brian Hopkinson said it was “stupid” the council could force a developer to provide parking spaces but was unable to make sure the spaces were useable.

Mr Ahluwalia has promised to provide 19 parking spaces altogether across existing car parks to the front and rear of the site.

But the car park at the back can only be reached via a private road, Bowers Hey, off Treeleaze.

Michael Woodward, who lives with his wife in Bowers Hey, told the committee that he and his neighbours own the private road, together with the previous owners of Willow Cottage.

Objecting to the application,  he said: “How can the new owner now be able to use this road without any approach to us? He will not answer emails and we cannot discuss it with him.”

A planning officer said it up to the developer to resolve the issue by reaching an agreement with the Woodwards and the other owners of Bowers Hey before selling the flats.

“If they can provide that parking, they can carry out that development,” the officer said. “The fact that they [future residents] can’t get to it is a risk that the developer would have to take.”

Mr Woodward asked the committee to prohibit on-street parking by future occupiers and to force the developer to add a turning circle to the small rear car park to stop cars “blindly reversing out” into Bowers Hey.

But council officers told committee members there was sufficient room for cars to manoeuvre within the rear car park and that it was not “reasonable” to prohibit parking outside the “curtilage” of the site, even though the developer had offered to agree to it.

The committee heard the developer was willing to put up signs to discourage on-street parking by future occupiers and to work with residents to allow them access through the site to the shops on Station Road.

The planning officers, who recommended Mr Ahluwalia’s plans for approval, did not consider the conversion would affect parking and traffic significantly.

The application was referred to the planning committee by Yate Central councillor Ruth Davis with the support of Dodington representative Tony Davis and James Arrowsmith, councillor for Stoke Park and Cheswick.