MACC Care Home to replace former Perdiswell Harvester in Worcester

Worcester City Council’s planning committee gave the green light to demolish the former Perdiswell Harvester and replace it with a 76-bed care home – a year after throwing out a similar plan for being too big.

It was a tight vote that resulted in the plan by care home provider MACC Care getting the thumbs up from the committee.

Those councillors opposing the new care home again criticised its ‘ugly’ design.

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Cllr Richard Udall compared the care home to a prison and was not convinced its rooms were big enough.

“I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder but to me, it looks like a prison,” he said at the planning meeting in the Guildhall on July 20.

And he was not wrong with the planning committee split over the care home’s look.

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Cllr Alan Amos said it looked like “something that was built in East Germany in the 1950s” and Cllr Owen Cleary, who called the designs “ugly and depressing” last year, said not much had changed and called for the plan to be turned down.

CLOSING: The former Perdiswell Harvester in April 2019 when it was announced the restaurant would be closing

Whereas Cllr Louis Stephen said the current site was an eyesore and the new plans looked like a “quality design” and building it would “significantly improve” the amount of housing in the city.

Cllr Jabba Riaz said the potential for jobs on a “secure, quiet and unassuming” site with no prospect of anti-social behaviour – compared to previous plans for a McDonald’s drive-thru – meant it “ticked a number of boxes” and he was concerned the council could not defend a refusal if the decision was appealed.

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Claines councillor Mel Allcott said “very little had changed” from last year’s plan and she called for it to be turned down again.

“There is more outdoor space, but we have been assured that the residents aren’t really going to be doing outside anyway so I still think this is overdevelopment.”

Cllr Allcott put it to the rest of the committee to reject the application, but a tight vote saw planning chair Cllr Karen Lewing, who said the design was “not that bad” and supported the proposed extra garden space, use her deciding vote to throw the call out after the committee was split by five votes to five.

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That meant the committee was then forced to vote again on whether the care home should be allowed to be built – which was won by six votes to five with Cllr Lewing again using her casting vote when the committee could not be split.

The plan for a 78-bed care home on the same site was rejected by councillors a year ago, who called the designs “ugly and depressing” and “lacking imagination” and akin to “barracks for warehousing people.”

Councillors went against the advice of officers when it rejected the plan and planners, who described the latest plan as “broadly identical” to the one rejected last year, again recommended the care home be approved.

A controversial plan to build a McDonald’s drive-thru on the site was eventually withdrawn in November 2019 after hundreds objected saying it should not be built near a school.