Top 50 Indie Park Garage Group has received planning permission for a charging station with café, which if successful could be used as a standalone template for other locations.
The site, on the A421 on the edge of Kings Langley near Watford in Hertfordshire, will have 28 charging bays for cars and another 10 for electric bike charging.
The planning gives permission for a 2,583sq ft building with a ’dwelling facility’ – a café, and rest area, with customer wifi and plug-in points to charge phones. But Park Garage Group may apply for permission to include a convenience store too.
The site is directly next door to the operator’s 24-hour Texaco Kings Langley petrol station which is likely, once the new operation is running, to be converted to pay at pump, and to have a greater focus on valeting.
As well as being a new type of format for the Croydon-based business, it is also unusual in that it has been given planning in a greenbelt area.
National planning policy gives strong protection to the greenbelt – an area of countryside which acts as a buffer between towns to prevent urban sprawl – and it goes as far as saying that construction of new buildings is generally not acceptable.
Planning will only be given in ‘very special circumstances’, with development normally considered inappropriate.
So says Simply Planning, the consultancy business which secured the go ahead for the site from Dacorum Borough Council. It argued the case for the need for EV charging at the location because of its proximity to the M25, M1 and A41.
The building will also be sympathetic to its surroundings with wooden cladding and plenty glazing. And the electric bike charging bays are in keeping with encouraging locals to arrive on two wheels when using the café.
Simply Planning’s graduate planner Jacob Baldwin says that the application sets a precedent because building in the greenbelt is exceptionally difficult.
“We successfully argued that Very Special Circumstances existed owing to the need for en-route zero emission refuelling and the site’s proximity to the strategic highway network. We believe this same argument could be applied for a whole host of other schemes that have been previously refused,” he says.
