PLANS to turn a temporary car park into a permanent facility for employees at Clays in Bungay have been approved. Formerly un-used land outside the factory complex was given permission in 2006 for temporary staff car parking.

PLANS to turn a temporary car park into a permanent facility for employees at Clays in Bungay have been approved.

Formerly un-used land outside the factory complex was given permission in 2006 for temporary staff car parking.

According to planning officials this was while an existing facility was displaced by a major extension to the printworks, and until the present dispatch yard could become a permanent car park.

A report to Waveney District Council says however, that “factory modernisation has succeeded in growing Clays business and employee numbers are such that the temporary parking is now asked to be permanent”.

Two residents had objected to the proposals involving the former 'picnic site' in Outney Road.

The proposals involve sealing off the end of Outney Road.

The report states: “To modernise and stay competitive Clays has had to redevelop its own car park because it had already filled its site over many decades.

“The large, now completed extension at the bypass/Broad Street end of the site has enabled more much needed automation of the plant. But Clays say that, far from reducing employment levels, this has enabled it to grow as a business and therefore need more staff, and therefore more parking, rather than less.

“For some decades, the residents of the Outney Road, and other narrow streets leading to it, have suffered the noise, danger, inconvenience and obstruction caused by HGVs and latterly employees associated with Clays.

“The re-routing of all this traffic to Broad Street is a landmark point in the residents' long campaign and it is notable that there are only two objections to the present application.

“The sealing off of the end of Outney Road could have been achieved without making the temporary car park permanent, but if Clays' car parking was to have continued to overspill its site, the pressure on other parking, on public car parks, streets and the Common would have continued to cause much resentment in the area.”

The application to remove conditions to enable the temporary car park to become permanent was approved at a Waveney District Council development control committee meeting on Wednesday.