CONTROVERSIAL plans to convert an abandoned sorting office into an “unwanted” café look set to be approved.
Royal Mail’s Lexden Heath delivery office closed in 2016 and has remained empty ever since.
But a café could open in its place if councillors approve blueprints to transform the site in London Road, Stanway, Colchester, at a meeting on Thursday subject to the applicant providing financial contributions to other community facilities.
The applicant said the opening of a new café opposite the Collier and Catchpole builders’ merchants could create six jobs in Stanway, including four full-time positions.
Councillors will decide on the plans after Stanway councillor Lesley Scott-Boutell raised several concerns about the proposals.
She feels there is “inadequate parking” with no cycle storage or disabled bays.
“There is not enough detail and too much detail is missing for an informed decision to be made,” she wrote.
Stanway Parish Council has also it said it “strongly objects to this proposal” and claims work has already started at the site despite no planning permission being given.
Several residents have also written to Colchester Council to object to the plans.
“This side of London Road is residential whereby the other side is predominantly businesses,” one neighbour wrote. “This is unwanted by residents.”
Another wrote: “I just cannot see a café being appropriate for this site at all and none of the new plans have changed this opinion.”
The former delivery office had been open for more than 40 years and had once been a fully-fledged post office.
A petition launched by Ms Scott-Boutell and her daughter Jessica, who was also a borough councillor at the time, sought to save the Lexden Heath delivery office as residents were concerned about travelling across Colchester to the remaining Royal Mail office in Moorside.
Services at the London Road site were gradually reduced but letters were still sorted there until its closure in 2016.
The closure was despite more than 600 frustrated residents signing the petition to save the delivery office.
Former sub-postmaster Graham Baxter had said it was “a great shame for the residents of Stanway” to lose the convenience of a local delivery office.
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