Click here to see map for location of Former Police Station Church Street Epsom KT17 4PS/a>

22/00923/FUL Demolition of the existing police station (Use Class E) and ambulance station (Sui Generis) and erection of a new residential, nursing and dementia care home for the frail elderly (Use Class C2) comprising ancillary communal facilities and dementia care, basement parking, reconfigured vehicular access onto Church Street, landscaping and all other associated works.

This proposal involves demolition of the existing Police and Ambulance services buildings, which are no longer in use, to replace them with a residential care home, with parking provision in a large underground basement. The Society supported the previous proposal in September 2022, while noting the groundwater flood risk arising from the increase in size of the basement over the existing building. The current proposal contains only minor variations from that of a year ago.

However, local residents have drawn the Society’s attention to the inadequacy of the investigation to date into the flood risk, and to the fact that, even without the enlarged basement, there have been three documented groundwater flood events in the area in the last two decades. When the application was scheduled for a decision on 9th November 2023, the Society wrote directly to the relevant Councillors alerting them to the unresolved issue of mitigation of the future increased risk.

In the event, the Planning Committee decided to defer a decision on the application pending further investigation and proposals for a solution of the increased risk.

See our letter here.

See our previous letter here.