Cheshire’s popular Carden Park Hotel has been given the go-ahead to build 67 “luxury” holiday lodges at its 1,000-acre estate grounds. The Broxton Road hotel will operate the “high-quality” lodges on an “owner-occupied basis” rather than renting them out to holidaymakers.
Carden Park lodged its plans back in October 2023, claiming this style of accommodation “is not widespread” in the borough and therefore had been “identified as a gap in the market”. In its full planning application to Cheshire West and Chester Council, the hotel said the lodges would be “a complementary and suitable addition to the wider hotel complex”.
The application was rubber-stamped by the local authority earlier this month. In a report recommending approval, case officer Edward Bannister said: “Whilst the application site is in the countryside where there is a general presumption against new development, given that the proposal relates to the expansion of an existing well-established tourist facility, the benefits of it are sufficient to outweigh the slight harm identified.
“Therefore, the proposals are considered to be acceptable, subject to conditions. This particular scheme would also be well screened in the medium to long-term, and the proposals would not result in any significant harm in terms of highways safety; residential amenity; biodiversity or flood risk.”
How Carden Park’s proposed holiday lodges could look
(Image: Planning Application)
Describing the development, the planning application stated: “Fundamentally, the development would act as an addition to Carden Park Hotel with all of the holidaymakers on site being reliant on (and indeed attracted to) the existing services and facilities available at the hotel complex. Whilst there are no buildings proposed with this application, it is proposed that one of the lodges is utilised as a reception and sales unit, which will be of a bespoke design (i.e. incorporating offices and lounge space rather than living accommodation).
“Such 12 month holiday seasons are now common place on holiday park/lodge developments throughout the UK and will allow the development to compete with other holiday developments in the area and throughout the UK which operate on an all year round holiday basis. In terms of occupation, it is envisaged that the holiday lodges will operate on an owner-occupied basis (whereby individual customers own their lodge with a holiday licence agreement in place) rather than a fleet hire/rental model whereby the hotel would retain ownership of the lodges and rent them out to holidaymakers throughout year.”
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