Holme House Care Home, Gomersal
Application to demolish a wing of Holme House, and the development of 8 dwellings:
A very handsome building that is robust and has offers enough utility to avoid unnecessary demolition. Sadly the M62 corridor housing market being as bullish as it is, eight 3-4 bed houses presumably offers a slightly higher return on investment. And even if that is not the case, some off the shelf housing types positioned here are much easier for an agent to market, and easier for an accountant to model into a business projection.
Heritage, as a positive economic externality has still yet to be somehow captured in our planning/economic system. I think it is time to explore the sustainability discourse; why not lets start making policies that allow demolitions such as this to be refused on the grounds of destroying the embodied energy they contain. Redeveloping this site would result in infinitely higher carbon emissions that the repurposing of the building for a similar use.
