Plans have been unveiled to add a postal sorting office, post office counter, laundry and dry cleaner to a filling station in the north.
Highland Council officers have recommended approval of the project at the Bridgend Filling Station in Beauly’s Station Road.
It would involves substantial ground floor alterations to form a Royal Mail sorting office together with a new shop area.
The plan also involved erecting a separate building to rehouse an expanded laundry business located to the south-west of the existing premises.
The upper floor would be used for storage of laundry.
The site is situated to the west of Beauly village, on the north side of the A892, and comprises the established existing filling station with an associated shop, launderette and separate retail unit accommodated within a one-and-a-half-storey building at the rear of the site.
The upper floors of the building have consent for use as two flats. The remainder of the site is for parking.
Beauly Community Council has objected because of its concerns about increased traffic and the implications for road safety and the extra burden on existing road junctions.
Up to five Royal Mail vans park overnight at the post office’s current Phipps Hall site.
A report to members of the south planning committee, which meets on Tuesday, says officers are satisfied the impact of traffic generated by post office vehicles “will not have a significant impact, as it will occur before the morning peak period”.
Mail would be delivered at 6am by a single, 7.5-tonne lorry.
And, after sorting, the nine smaller postal vehicles would have left the site. No postal vehicles would be left on site overnight.
The report adds that the laundry provides a pick-up service “which aims to reduce the number of vehicle movements to the site” and that “there is unlikely to be a significant rise in the number of trips for petrol due to the continuing reduction in sales that the business has experienced”.