Plans have been submitted to demolish a former care home and build eight modern family homes in its place.

But the scheme for the old Kelling Park Care Home site off Holgate Hill have been recommended for refusal by North Norfolk District Council's planning officers due to environmental concerns, and the fact the district already has a five-year supply of housing land.

Kelling Estate wants to build the homes on its land behind Holt Garden Centre, which it also owns.

North Norfolk News: A vision for how the new homes on the former Kelling Park Care Home site could look.A vision for how the new homes on the former Kelling Park Care Home site could look. (Image: Planning documents)


The plan is for a mix of two, three and four-bedroom homes, two of which would be bungalows, two with 1.5 storeys as well as four long, high-pitched two-storey dwellings.

Planning documents show their facades would feature dark grey timber boards with a flint cobble base.

The application says: "The contemporary appearance of the houses will derive from the desire to create a settlement in a setting surrounded by woodland and countryside that doesn’t draw on traditional vernacular architectural types.

"The houses are deliberately long and narrow creating a 3D form with narrow gables and a double roof that is unlike a standard developer house. They are more redolent of 16th century agricultural buildings."

Kelling Estate wants to build eight homes on the site of the former Kelling Park Care Home, shown here just to the south of Holt Garden Centre

But a report prepared ahead of of an NNDC development meeting on Thursday, February 25, said the applicant had underestimated the landscape and visual impact the development would have.

It also said the care home had not been put on the market and a financial viability analysis had not been undertaken into its loss, which was contrary to the council's policy.

The report said: "The proposal would result in harm to the special qualities of the Norfolk Coast AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty), and local landscape, officers consider that the applicant has failed to demonstrate or appropriately justify why the development needs to be located within an area afforded the highest status of protection."

Kelling Parish Council has said they supported the plans, but only if the homes were banned from being used as holiday lets, a landscape plan was approved, and a pedestrian/cycle route be established into the village of Kelling.