Cobstar wrote:

The last house we lived in was a new build on a modern estate. It came with a long list of restrictive covenants including restrictions on parking on roadways and running a business from the property. Despite objections a neighbour got permission to run an extended child minding service with extra staff. The planners said they did not have to take into account the covenants!

Correct, planning law does not have to take into consideration issues such as covenants on the use of land or property, that is a civil matter between the relevant parties - usually a freeholder & whoever owned the land before it was first built on.

Planners only take into account matters of fact & subjective opinion or hearsay have not weight. It sounds to me as if there are two lines that need to be followed, first a matter of civil action by those who have a right to use the land that has now been walled off if they have one - spend some money collectively on a letter from a solicitor to the new owner advising them that they are in breach of any collective agreement about use or access over the land & give them notice to remove the wall by a given date or it will be removed & they will be persued for the costs through the courts. Also worth including, if valid, a statement denying them the right of access across any land owned by you for their commercial gain - ie if they have a right to pass & repass over the land to access their residential dwelling that's fine but they do not have the right to do so to reach a business premises. A decent solicitor can check that out for you & prepare the letter.

Second thing to do is to carry out accurate surveys of existing car parking in the area & specifically on the days & at the times the nursery is going to be in operation so you have some specific evidence of the situation as it prevails at the moment. Take photos & get plans drawn up showing where parking areas are located. Be careful what plans you use as you need to have a licence to use things like OS maps but that can be included in the fee if you buy digital mapping online. After this do a search online for planning applications for nurseries (ideally locally but if not there's no harm using one in a similar urban location from another part of the country) & look for a TRANSPORT STATEMENT or TRANSPORT ASSESSMENT report - these types of reports will set out traffic generation based on criteria such as number of child places proposed, data is usually drawn from a nationally recognised database called TRICS. Word of advice here, don't copy this as they get a bit nasty about people breaching their copyright. Anyway, what you need to do is find a planning application for a nursery of similar size & make a note of the traffic generation by time of day - there's usually a table showing this. You can then refer to this particular planning application as the source of your information & explain why you think that when assessed against a background of existing parking problems the additional traffic & parking stress, which in turn means reduction in road safety for other users & especially the more vulnerable 'non-motorised users', is not acceptable & would result in a detriment to highway safety & capacity. Now, if you've not fallen asleep reading this yet, the next stage is to find the councils adopted local plan & look for the transport policies - in these you will find one or more that say development shall only be permitted if it will not be detrimental to highway safety, or similar words. When you find it include a reference to it in your objection - ie when you say the combination of 50 parents in cars turning up to drop their kid off on the way to work, parking on pavements or blocking road crossings at the same time as children are walking to school is dangerous add that it is also contrary to council policy & quote not only the policy number but also paraphrase from it.

Lobby your local councillors too - after all it's you that elect them & let them know you expect them to be on your side.

Last bit of advice, don't get emotional about it all. I know it's difficult not to, but your argument will work best if it is factual & accurate rather than emotive & making you al, sound like NIMBYs.

good luck

Cobstar wrote:

The last house we lived in was a new build on a modern estate. It came with a long list of restrictive covenants including restrictions on parking on roadways and running a business from the property. Despite objections a neighbour got permission to run an extended child minding service with extra staff. The planners said they did not have to take into account the covenants!

isn't that just great. don't need to take into account covenants.....that's a real in my opinion.