Plan for warehouses in green belt on former nursery site rejected by planners

PLANS to build four new warehouses on a former nursery site on green belt at Lymm have been thrown out by town planners.

The proposal involved the erection of 4 new warehouses/storage buildings at the former Broomedge Nurseries Site, on Burford Lane, Broomedge, Lymm.

The application relates to an irregularly shaped site comprising approximately 24116m² (2.41ha) of land situated in the Green Belt to the eastern side of Burford Lane in the Broomedge area of Warrington. The site lies outside the Green Belt settlement village of Broomedge and was formerly in use as a commercial horticultural Nursery and contains a number of greenhouses which have fallen into disrepair, a number of workshops plus a steel-framed part-brick building located towards the centre of the site plus areas of hardstanding.
The north part of the site appears to be degraded and is overgrown with rubble mounds towards the northern boundary.
It was proposed to replace three existing Greenhouses with single-storey buildings. Each building would be circa 50m² and would have a pitched roof to a maximum height of 5m. The applicant proposes to rent commercial storage space in each of the buildings.
Planners say that once the current building is demolished, which needs to happen to make way for the proposed buildings, there would be no building and therefore the proposed
buildings could not be said to be within the curtilage of a building; Furthermore, there is no permission in place to demolish the existing buildings and it has not been demonstrated that such permission is not required.

In support of the application, it was stated that Broomedge Nurseries was established around 1936/37 for the purpose of growing plants in the glasshouses erected on the site. The site has not been used as a horticultural site for the 20 years following the closing and ceasing of trade of the nursery in early 2003. It was instead used for storage by renting out the greenhouses, shed and land out for landscaping firms, car storage, gating along with a number of other companies over this time. The yard is currently being used by a scaffold business and the steel and brick buildings by third parties. The previous owner of the site at various stages rented out the site and buildings to a number of different businesses/parties following ceasing of the garden centre on site.
In April 2025, a certificate of existing lawful development was granted which confirmed that the site in question had been in continuous use for B2 and B8 purposes for in excess of 10 years.
But Warrington Borough Council planners rejected the application under delegated powers on the basis of the information submitted, the development described would not meet the criteria, including conditions, for permitted development as set out in Schedule 2, Part 7, Class H of the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015(as amended). Furthermore, the application does not demonstrate that planning permission is not required for the demolition of the existing buildings. As such the proposed development would not be lawful.