PLANNERS are recommending approval of a 72-bedroom care home on the site of the former St Ives Motel in London Road.
Care UK Community Partnerships want to demolish the single-storey motel and 16 letting rooms on the half-hectare site to make way for the care home for frail and elderly people.
The layout also includes an ‘internal village’ of facilities such as a hairdresser, shop, gym and cinema room.
The plans, which include 26 car parking spaces, 14 cycle spaces and a waiting area for an ambulance, will be considered by Huntingdonshire District Council’s development management panel on Monday.
The proposals are supported by Hemingford Grey Parish and St Ives Town Councils, the Environment Agency, highways department and NHS, but seven objections have been received from or on behalf of residents of apartments in The Limes, a Grade II-listed former workhouse next door.
They complain that the site would be cramped, their homes in the two-storey Limes would be dominated by the three-storey care home, and the pile-driving could damage their homes.
But planners say the tallest part of the care home would actually be lower than the tallest point of the Limes, so the setting of the listed building would not be compromised, and the neighbours would not be overlooked.
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