A former Inverness care home could be turned into a lavish home for its owner.
Taj Manda closed Fairfield care home on Fairfield Road in 2018 after a damning watchdog report.
Mr Manda, now in his early eighties, applied last year for a change of use to turn the property into a 32 bedroom hotel/guest house.
This was refused amid neighbour objections as having insufficient parking and being ‘detrimental to the established residential character of the area and the amenity of the nearby residents and the community as a whole’.
The property at 68-70 Fairfield Road is two conjoined stone houses.
The latest plan involves it being turned into an eight-bed house, with parking and turning space for 10 vehicles.
The remaining 27 rooms will be used for a variety of domestic purposes, including ensuites and dressing rooms, dining, sitting and TV rooms, a sewing room and nursery, drawing room and library, boot room, pets’ parlour, two studies, a garden room, music room, gym, yoga and sauna, wine store, various lounges and a snug.
The ground floor alone has more than 15 toilets.
The exterior of the building is to remain unchanged, with some tree removal and replanting on the grounds.
A planning report states the ‘re-use of this building as house within a residential part of Inverness is not considered to have any significantly detrimental impacts on the established and existing residential amenity of the area’.
The planners say they consider the 10 parking spaces to be acceptable, and welcome the tree plan as it would ‘improve the immediate streetscape and open-up the frontage of the building’.
The latest plans will go before south planning councillors next Tuesday with a recommendation to grant.
