It can still be found on the odd website advertising car repair centres but one glance in the passing confirms that it has been a few years since people were busy selling, breaking and repairing cars here. The site encompasses an area measuring about 1.5 hectares and is situated immediately to the west of the playing field. The gate at the entrance is high and padlocked. A number of dilapidated sheds of various sizes can be seen beyond but the adjoining high hedge prevents any more views.
Temporary permission was granted for part of the site to be used for vehicle accident repair in 1974, a permission that expired more than 30 years ago, in 1978. For the following 20-odd years the buildings continued to be used for selling and repairing cars, until the business closed in about the year 2000. The first record indicating a change of use dates from 1999, when a certificate of lawfulness was issued for the siting of a caravan, followed in 2001 by a permission for the erection of a dwelling that was to replace the existing caravan. The dwelling, however, was never built. With planning permission in their pocket, the owners sold the site to a developer instead.
Planning history:
2002 - Permission refused for the erection of 12 market dwellings (no affordable units)
2003 - Permission refused for the erection of 6 market dwellings (no affordable units)
2004 - Permission refused for the erection of 8 dwellings, including 4 affordable, with creation of 2 ponds, parking area & landscape
In 2005 there was yet another revised proposal comprising 10 dwellings, including 4 affordable units. It too was refused. One of the assessors commented that "the removal of the site's use and its buildings would not be of significant benefit to the village, other than in visual terms with the removal of unsightly dilapidated industrial buildings but it can also be argued that the replacement of these buildings with 10 dwellings represents a far more intrusive form of development, particularly as the site is located in a prominent position outside the boundary of the village."
Six years on, the sheds are dilapidated and vandalised, with no glass left in the windows. Rubble, rubbish, old tyres and rusty bits and pieces take up most of the space outside where weeds are flourishing. And yet, one of the sheds appears to have been home to somebody, at least for some time.
A 'train' of decaying railway goods vans, one of which reduced to a shell due to having been set on fire, completes the set, as it were.
