A PRIVATE healthcare company with bases around Monmouthshire has been granted permission to set up a care home in a village despite residents’ concerns.

The Priory Group will open a care home for up to six young people, aged nine to 18 years, in Mitchel Troy despite opposition.

But they will be unable to open a school, which would have been built from a stone barn in the same village for the time being, after Monmouthshire councillors turned it down because of noise concerns.

The Priory Group already runs the Talocher School in Wonastow, near Monmouth, and others in Abergavenny, Pontypool and Newport.

Some villagers said they were opposed because they worried that children and elderly residents could be put at risk.

They were backed by their county councillor, Geoff Burrows, who is also Monmouthshire council’s cabinet member for social care.

Speaking at a meeting of the council’s planning committee on Tuesday, April 12, he said he worried about the suitability of the house and school being based in the village and recounted “instances of children wandering off and a member of staff trailing behind in a car at 5mph”.

He said allowing the house would be “utter madness”.

He added later, over the possibility of The Priory Group’s involvement: “Can I remind people that since the last LDP [Local Development Plan] this is not defined as a village?

"It is open countryside, it is less than a village. So in terms of putting businesses into the open countryside, we can leave that thought hanging.”

But residents were not universally opposed.

In council documents, one had told planning officers in a consultation: “These are children who have a variety of issues and need care and support, not to be made to feel like criminals.”

Another person who said they were impartial to the scheme wrote: “Mitchel Troy is a village that seems to like to pick and choose who does and doesn’t live here.”

But on rejecting the school, planning committee member Cllr Phil Murphy said he was “not convinced there are no other facilities across the county (for children to be educated at)… I don’t think the presence of a small school in that area is beneficial at all.”

To view the application documents visit www.monmouthshire.gov.uk