A REDUNDANT church building can continue operating as a day nursery despite fears of a child being injured and bin lorries damaging grass verges, councillors have decided.

Blackburn with Darwen Council planning committee has granted backdated planning approval for the change of use of the former St Paul's RC Church in Preston Old Road, Blackburn.

The application by Synergy Day Care Ltd trading as Tudor House Day Nursery was debated by councillors after an objection from Livesey Parish Council.

It said it was concerned about the amount of additional traffic generated by putting a nursery so near to St Paul’s RC Primary School whilst providing very little additional parking or turning space.

The parish council's worries were echoed in the meeting as Conservative group spokesman Cllr Paul Marrow and Liberal Democrat Paul Browne said the unnamed road leading to the former church was too narrow to cope safely with the likely extra traffic.

Cllr Marrow said: "I cringe at the prospect of more traffic going up there. It's already very busy.

"I would just hate to have a child knocked down.

"It would be awful if a child was hurt by a car."

He also echoed the parish council's concern about the request for planning permission being backdated, saying: "We seem to have a lot of retrospective planning applications. We need to take action."

Cllr Browne said: "The drivers of our waste collection lorries are the worst for going over grass verges.

"This back street is too narrow and has grass verges at the end.

"The bin wagons will go over them and cut them up.

"There is no point the council paying to put the verges in and then them being cut up and ruined. Our bin wagons are too big to go up these backs."

Labour's Cllr Sylvia Liddle said that the hours of drivers dropping of and picking up children from the nursery and school would be staggered and not coincide.

She added that only the parish council and no nearby residents had objected which she would have expected if there were real fears over road safety.

Committee chairman Cllr Dave Smith said parking around schools was a nightmare everywhere in the borough and the committee could not turn every application near one down.  Borough regeneration boss Cllr Phil Riley said turning the application down would be 'disproportionate'.