Glory Park Wooburn Green: 24-Hour Car Centre Backed

The last undeveloped piece of the old Glory Mill site at Wooburn Green would become a car preparation centre, under plans councillors decide tonight. Officers have recommended approval.

The application goes to the West Buckinghamshire Area Planning Committee at 6.30pm on Wednesday 26 August in the High Wycombe Council Chamber, Queen Victoria Road, HP11 1BB. The meeting is webcast. It is item 4 on the agenda.

The applicants are Citygate Automotive Limited and BAM Glory Mill. The recommendation is not a straight approval: officers ask the committee to be “minded to grant” and then defer, so a section 106 agreement can be signed to fund monitoring of the travel plan.

What a PDI centre actually is

A pre-delivery and inspection centre is where new vehicles are checked and prepared before they reach a dealer. Cars and commercial vehicles arrive by transporter, are scanned at the gate, then go into the building for workshop, photographic studio and valeting work, and are sent out again. The officer’s report is explicit that the site would not be used to sell vehicles.

The site is L-shaped and split in two by Glory Park Avenue, the River Wye and the Glory Mill Loop. The eastern parcel would take the building and the staff parking. The western parcel would be used only for parking stored vehicles.

The main building would be two storeys, 51.7 metres wide, 20.4 metres deep, with an eaves height of 8.07 metres and a ridge of 8.99 metres. It would sit 61 metres back from the road, 12 metres from the rear boundary and between 35 and 49 metres from the south east boundary. There would be 31 staff and visitor spaces, including two accessible bays, and a minimum of two cycle spaces. About seven transporter deliveries a day are estimated.

Twenty-six years empty

Glory Mill was a paper mill that grew over many years. It was demolished around 2000. Part of the land became housing in the early 2000s and other parts became offices. This is the piece that never got built on, even though outline permission for offices was granted in 2007 and reserved matters approved in 2009.

The owners told the council that the office market has shifted towards town centre locations, and that office development here is unlikely to come forward in the foreseeable future. The report accepts that, and accepts the trade-off it involves: the vehicle centre would create considerably fewer jobs than the permitted office scheme would have. Its answer is that the site is otherwise standing empty, that the proposal keeps much of the land open, and that a future redevelopment for another kind of employment use would not be ruled out.

Who objected

The application was called in by Councillors Wilson, Townsend and Drayton, to let the committee weigh employment against highway impact, residential amenity and the effect on the River Wye and biodiversity. Wooburn and Bourne End Parish Council also asked for it to be decided by committee, given the objections from residents.

Five objections were received, including one from the Old Paper Mill Close Residents Association. The main points were:

• noise from vehicle movements, machinery, alarms and tannoys
• the 24/7 nature of the business, and long working hours in the evening and at weekends
• light spill into gardens and the effect of lighting on wildlife
• large vehicles on unsuitable roads, and existing overspill parking along Watery Lane
• odour from processes such as paint spraying
• possible pollution of the river, and an inadequate buffer to the watercourse
• the limited number of jobs for the amount of land used

Two comments supported the proposal, on the grounds that it has a lower environmental impact than earlier schemes for the site. One of those still wanted the Watery Lane gate kept permanently shut and the boundary screened with trees. The existing vehicular access onto Watery Lane is shown as stopped up in the plans.

The overnight restrictions

The building itself would operate 24 hours a day. What the acoustic assessment proposes, and what officers want conditioned, is a set of controls between 9pm and 6 or 7am.

The report says transporter deliveries could run from 6am to 9pm, with no unloading before 7am, without a significant effect on neighbours. Between 9pm and 7am the noise management plan would stop:

• any movement of vehicles in the storage area
• vehicle access doors to the centre being opened
• vehicles moving into or out of the centre
• unloading of transporters
• vehicle maintenance or wheel removal in the external areas
• use of the outdoor wet and dry valet bays
• deliveries of parts and other supplies

A separate condition would bar transporters from arriving or leaving between 9pm and 6am. The modelling puts predicted noise below background levels from 7am to 11pm, and finds a low impact overnight with doors closed and no outside working.

The river

Two chalk streams cross the site: the River Wye and the Glory Mill Loop. Policy asks for a buffer between development and a watercourse, and the scheme provides between three and five metres next to the River Wye, which is below the minimum.

The applicant argued the scheme depends on maximising the area available for vehicle storage, and that a wider buffer would compromise it. Both the Environment Agency and the council’s ecologist had objected on that point and have since withdrawn those objections, in exchange for a package of enhancements to the watercourse secured by condition.

Surveys found a good population of slow worms and a small population of common lizard on the site, and a reptile mitigation strategy has been submitted. The development has to deliver 10% biodiversity net gain and 25% canopy cover. The submitted metric shows not all the net gain can be delivered on site, so off-site credits would have to be bought. The council’s ecologist is now satisfied the submission meets the statutory requirement.

What it means for you

If the committee agrees, nothing is granted tonight. The recommendation is “minded to grant, defer for planning obligation”, so permission only follows once the section 106 agreement funding travel plan monitoring is completed.

For anyone living near the site, the conditions are the part worth reading rather than the decision. The noise management plan, the lighting strategy and the transporter curfew are what determine how the site actually feels at 10pm, and all three are conditions to be approved after permission rather than settled tonight.

The meeting starts at 6.30pm at the council chamber on Queen Victoria Road and is webcast. This is item 4; item 5 is the 16-bed homeless hostel at 8-9 Easton Street. The committee next meets on Wednesday 23 September.

More local applications and decisions are tracked in High Wycombe planning news.

Sources

• Officer’s report and Appendix A on PL/25/5130/FA, West Buckinghamshire Area Planning Committee, 26 August 2026, for the proposal, the site history, the recommendation, the conditions, the consultation responses and the representations.
• Agenda for the West Buckinghamshire Area Planning Committee, 26 August 2026 for the time, the venue, the item order and the webcast.