Plans to knock down and rebuild a forecourt in Lowestoft have been refused by East Suffolk Council for the second time.
The garage owner, NPRT Limited, initially sought to revamp Gunton Garage to the north of the town by replacing the forecourt, shop and tanks, demolishing a site-manager’s bungalow while adding EV charging, a car wash and drive-through restaurant.
That application was refused by East Suffolk Council last December over concerns it would being an “intensification” to the site, leading the developers to submit revised plans. These no longer featured the car wash or drive-through, but had an addition in the form of a three-bedroom flat above the forecourt shop, plus a new purpose-built facility for the hand car wash that is already operational at the garage. Plus the original underground tanks would be kept rather than being replaced owing to concerns relating to tanker movements and ground pollution.
The revised plans have now also been refused, with the council ruling in August that it considered the project would “have an adverse impact on neighbouring amenity in terms of noise impacts and increased traffic impacts”. The council said that the apartment above the shop would require a further noise assessment, alongside mitigation measures.
East Suffolk Council also identified that the land the forecourt occupies is in a Groundwater Source Protection Zone, and that “insufficient information” had been submitted to demonstrate that the site was suitable for redevelopment due to “risks arising from the potential pollution of and contamination of controlled waters, owing to the presence of two underground fuel storage tanks that have leaked as recently as 2010, and date from 1973 and 1984”.
The council’s highways department said that the plans were 10 parking spaces short of what regulation required, while National Highways recommended refusal on the grounds that a swept-path analysis would be required to demonstrate safe vehicle movements on the site.
