New hospital and padel courts planned for city

A care home, a new hospital and four padel courts were among the planning applications approved for Peterborough throughout October.

Among them was the former Cherry Tree pub in Woodston that will be renovated for a new 80-bed care home, and the Thorpe Wood Hospital that was expected to create about 90 full-time jobs.

Here the applications in detail:

The former Cherry Tree pub on Oundle Road, Woodston, has remained vacant since it closed in 2016. Despite a campaign being launched to save it in 2020, it was sold to developers for more than £400,000 in the same year.

Synergy Care Developments and Muller Property Group have now received full planning permission to build an 80-bed care home on the site, with the pub building to be reinstated for residents.

Quaffins Ltd successfully applied to Peterborough City Council to change the use of the Dog In A Doublet pub on North Bank in Thorney into a five-bedroom house.

The pub, which featured on Channel 4's Four in a Bed, was previously run by former MasterChef contestant John McGinn but has remained vacant since 2023.

Peterborough City Council's planning committee approved proposals for a new medical facility in Thorpe Wood that will serve as an extension to the nearby Fitzwilliam Hospital in South Bretton.

The development will typically have a split of 60% NHS cases and 40 % private insurance cases, and would be able to provide on-site MRI and CT scanners for early diagnostic and surgical intervention.

A 66-bed two-storey care home being delivered by LNT Care Developments will provide care for older people, including residential dementia care.

Located near the existing Thorpe Wood Care Home on Earlham Road, the new site will employ 44 full-time employees.

Hampton Medical Centre, currently located at the Serpentine Green shopping centre, has been deemed no longer fit for purpose due to its limited space and growing local population.

Plans were approved for a new purpose-built medical facility at Silver Hill, which would serve as the new base for Hampton Medical Centre.

Plans for four new covered padel courts with floodlights, submitted by James Jones, were approved this month.

Pulse Padel's website states the site located off Eye Road at Peterborough Retail Park will open by the end of 2025.

Blind Tiger Taproom and Kitchen opened in the summer at the site of a former bike shop on Ham Lane, near Ferry Meadows.

Tom Owen of No Work Club Peterborough Ltd planned to launch a leisure activities business from the first floor, if approved by the city council.

However, an initial planning application from the business was refused by the council in August because officers felt it would "introduce a main town centre use in an out-of-centre location without sufficient justification".

Mr Owen resubmitted these plans in October and included a leisure impact assessment, which revealed that no other sites in the city would be suitable.

The Environment Agency applied for a lawful development certificate to refurbish a number of locations along a vast stretch of the Maxey Cut, which has suffered erosion over the years.

Built in the 1950s, the Maxey Cut is an artificial canal which alleviates flood risks in Market Deeping and Deeping St James from the River Welland.

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