For over 80 years, the local family business has operated from the site since the mid 1930’s, and employs over 20 members of staff, all of whom live locally to the area of Leyland, Preston.

The business refines, compresses, packages and then bags wood shavings and sawdust, which has substantially grown over the years. In June 2016, a number of Key buildings suffered substantial fire damage, resulting in the Primary buildings no longer being fit for purpose and in need of demolition and replacement.

The business has therefore been considerably limited in its ability to operate, process and supply its customers base since June 2016, and temporary contingencies were required to be put in place by the Applicant- but only as a short term measure.

Following the events in June 2016, the Applicant sort professional advice from both the local planning authority and a number of technical consultants. They were given three options:

1. Re-develop the site as existing

2.Re-develop the site, but relocate two of the existing buildings to the storage yard land located to the south.

3.Re-locate to alternative premises within the South Ribble Borough.

In terms of option 3, the applicant took a sequential search of alternative premises, assisted by the Council, but there were no suitable sites that met the research methodology criterion. Option 3 was discounted.

When assessing the positives and negatives of option 1, rather than simply re-develop the existing site in terms of the existing building siting, design and appearance, the event of the fire damage, does present a positive opportunity to review the existing operations at the site and in turn, improve functionality, productivity and further reduce any impacts identified on adjoining residential properties and environment in the locality.

It was therefore identified that the most suitable approach would be to adopt option 2, that is to re-develop the Application Site, by the re-posting two of the existing buildings (one of them fire damaged) to the existing yard area to the south of the site.