Shipping containers are to be used on a Wimborne site for a self-storage business.
Dorset Council has approved the use of 41 containers on the western section of the Davids of Wimborne Ltd roofing business site at the Stone Lane industrial estate.
The planning consent includes the demolition of a large storage unit, offices and a garage to make way for the self-storage proposal, using standard 20-foot containers.
Eighteen residents from Walford Gardens, Farmers Walk and Stone Lane raised concerns about additional traffic, noise and pollution from the development, one claiming “This application does not appear to be in keeping with the generally rural nature of the local area.”
One also raised a question about what was going to be stored in the containers and if they might present an additional fire risk.
An agent for the company said that far from being in the countryside the estate has had various industrial uses over many years, many of them much noisier than storage containers are likely to be.
Said the agent: “Currently, the existing garage runs a compressor 24 hours a day, and the car sales runs a jet wash to clean their cars 7 days a week. The roller doors to the garage are known to go up and down at least 20 times a day, and none of this has ever resulted in a noise complaint.
“As stated previously, a storage site is often very quiet, and as a good portion of the site is proposed to be storage, there will be far less noise than many of the site’s historic tenants already mentioned. The containers will be used for household storage, a far less noisy industry than that of the workshop/garage, as objects stored within containers tend to make less noise than people working on site all day.”
The agent says the containers are intended to be single-level and not stacked.
A Dorset Council planning case officer said industrial use on the site dates back to at least the 1970s with the proposed storage use considered acceptable in planning terms with a row of trees running along most of the site boundary protecting neighbouring properties.
