Plans for a Congleton nursing home to significantly extend its building have been met with over 20 objections from residents and the town council.

Applicant Mr Patel has submitted a planning application to Cheshire East Council for a ground floor extension, which will form 11 extra bedrooms, a laundry and lounge at Heliosa Nursing Home, 54 Boundary Lane, Congleton.

Despite applying for an extension and 18 additional members of staff being employed, the application would not see an increase in the 17 on-site car parking spaces which are currently provided.

Speaking at Thursday's Congleton Town Council planning meeting, neighbouring resident Georgia Angus spoke about her concerns regarding the application.

Mrs Angus said: "I have concerns over the green belt which I believe the next extension will sit in and the fact there is a lot of green belt behind and wooded land which might be adopted and lead to further development.

"There is a wealth of wildlife in that woodland, which would get eradicated. I also feel the site that belongs to Heliosa, if the extension went ahead would be a massive overbuild on that land.

"I'm concerned about drainage for my property because we do share drains and we have had issues in the past with effluent flooding in the back of my house.

"The main issue for most residents is the road, it is impassable for buses and any emergency vehicles."

Alan Broom, who lives on Abbott's Close, which is adjacent to Heliosa, said: "The area in front of Heliosa is extremely busy during school run times. The proposed extension will generate a lot of additional traffic from additional staff and client visitors.

"With the additional traffic there is going to be an effect on air pollution and the safety of residents, particularly young children at 9am and 3pm with Mossley Primary School only 200m away.

"Abbott's Close at school run times is currently a car park and with increased traffic this is going to be even worse, the situation will be exacerbated, and it is quite dangerous with delivery lorries and bin lorries."

Cllr Kay Wesley proposed that the town council rejected the application and highlighted that the proposal was for the half of the size again of the current Heliosa building. There have been over 20 objections registered by residents on Cheshire East's planning portal.

Cllr Wesley suggested the town council opposed the application on the grounds of layout and density of buildings, noise and disturbance from use, highway and safety issues, traffic generation, adequacy of parking and nature conservation.

Cllr James Smith, who lives on Boundary Lane, has noticed several staff members from Mossley Primary School and Heliosa park along the road.

He added: "This coupled with the school traffic, which is almost endless at the moment means it is very dangerous and I'm pretty sure its only a matter of time before someone gets injured."

Cllr Robert Hemsley felt that the application was "an unfortunate case of the right people doing the right thing, but in the completely wrong building and place".

He added: "I don't want to sound negative, because we want to encourage this due to the ageing population. Perhaps we have got to look at why at the same time we have got mothballed Cheshire East buildings that are purpose built like Mountview and the residential parts of that are not being used.

"At least we could sell them to these people or reinstate them to increase capacity if that is what is needed."

Looking at the car parking from a different perspective, Cllr Suzy Firkin, felt it was equally important that the users of the residential facility had adequate parking in order to provide the right facilities.

Councillors agreed to recommend refusal for the application.

The last date for submitting comments on the application is today (23 September) and Cheshire East have set a decision target date of 20 October. You can view the plans here.