Support for guest house

Plans to change a former nursing home into a guest house have been supported by Southwell Town Council.

Its planning committee unanimously agreed to support an application to change the use of The Old Vicarage, Westgate, Southwell from a residential dwelling.

The committee chairman, Mr Brendan Haigh, said: “This is the sort of thing we should be encouraging.”

Mr Graham Ball said the application would retain the character of the 19th Century building.

It was previously The Old Vicarage Resource Centre.

It closed in 2004 when the Three Spires Day Centre, on Nottingham Road, Southwell, opened.

The building is on a 1.26-acre plot and has sitting rooms, dining rooms, offices, 17 bedrooms and a kitchen.

There are also several outhouses, including a barn and four stable blocks.

The former vicarage became a nursing home in 1951 and provided a day centre seven days a week for 16 users.

It also provided respite care for people who had left hospital or while carers were away.

It was sold for £800,000 at an auction run by Savills of Nottingham in October 2006.

Nottinghamshire County Council, the former owners of the building, made an unsuccessful planning application to turn the site into six separate houses in January 2005.

The chairman of the Southwell Tourism Partnership, Mrs Beryl Prentice, said there was a desperate need for more guest houses in Southwell.

“We are so short of accommodation in the town,” she said.

“We do struggle when we have big events like the folk festival and the flower festival so it would be fantastic to have more accommodation.”

She said in the past appeals had been made by herself and the previous chairman of the tourism partnership, Mr Roger Dobson, for people to let out their spare rooms as a way of providing more accommodation in the town.

The final decision on the application will be made by Newark and Sherwood District Council.