Commissioners’ plans to create a storage and works depot at Breagle Glen in Port Erin has provoked objectons from residents.

The local authority submitted an application (18/01151/B) for a two-storey depot to replace a smaller single-storey storage building.

The proposal also includes alterations and extension to the glen’s main car park, including lighting and landscaping.

The bid replaces a previous plan - in 2016 - for demolition of the existing commissioners’ store and construction of three business units.

This provoked objections from residents concerned the area was not zoned for light industrial use and the noise and increased traffic would have a detrimental impact on neighbours. The authority held the plan in abeyance pending a review of all commissioners’ facilities to rationalise management of their services and make best use of assets.

As a result, it was decided the business units ’may be better suited to a site more easily accessible and more central to the town’ and the application was withdrawn.

In the architect’s design statement for the revised plan, it says: ’The existing commissioners storage building in Breagle Glen is undersized and not efficiently used, and the adjacent site has become an unsightly general storage area.

It continues: ’The commissioners have decided that the site would be better used to centralise their other storage and works facilities within a new larger depot building which will replace the existing building. This will tidy up and rationalise the current use of the site and would free up other locations in Port Erin for the proposed business units.’

The proposed building will provide a general storage area and overnight parking for the commissioners’ works vehicles.

It will also include a small workshop for minor repairs and maintenance and an office and staff facilities. It can be used by commissioners’ staff during the day.

Three spaces in front of the proposed storage will be used to recharge commissioners’ electric vehicles.

The bays will have a grass/seddum roof as screening.

Edward and Paul Haley, who live on land next to the site in Sunnydale Avenue, said they ’strongly object’ to the bid.

’The proposed two-storey industrial unit is unacceptably dominant and entirely out of scale with the predominantly single-storey Sunnydale Avenue,’ they submitted to planners.

Brian and Pat Quirk, also from Sunnydale Avenue, said: ’The current building, which is a single-storey building, is to be replaced by an imposing Balthane-sized industrial building which is certainly not in keeping and will dominate the surrounding properties.’

They also raised concerns about the noise of vehicles.

Long-standing resident Peter Clark, of Sunnydale Avenue, described the application as ’worse than the original’.

’We do not agree on having a works/commissioners yard being installed next to our property, taking the current and long-standing grassed area and part of a national glen away.’