Plans for two ‘huge’ new warehouses have been passed despite pleas from residents who say noise pollution from the industrial estate site is already making their lives a misery. Proposals for two industrial units - standing at 12.5 and 10 metres tall respectively - at Kingsway Business Park, in Rochdale, were passed by a majority vote of the council’s planning committee.
A report to the committee stated that the buildings would be 34 metres from the nearest homes and pose ‘no unacceptable harm’ in terms of visual intrusion, overshadowing, overbearing impact or noise and disturbance’. Applicant Wilson Bowden Developments has planning permission for a similar scheme, albeit with nine-metre high buildings, to fall back on, but had been asked to carry out further consultation with residents after the application was deferred back in February.
They returned with a revised scheme for ‘Plot J2’ - including shortening and widening of the car park to allow for an increased landscape buffer to the nearest homes, moving boundary treatments further away from Lower Lane, and additional planting at the site boundary. But residents claimed that the revisions were nothing more than tweaks that would do nothing to mitigate the ‘terrible effect’ the scheme would have on their lives.
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