A major sewer pipe which runs across the former Admiral Nelson site in Falmouth has led to developers putting in a fresh application for 44 retirement homes which has prompted opposition from town councillors and local residents.

A planning inspector had previously approved plans for 46 apartments on the site after Cornwall Council refused the plans, but the discovery that a major sewer crossed the site in Bar Road has led developers McCarthy and Stone to put forward a new application.

This is for 44 apartments which would be built on a different part of the site, closer to neighbouring Port Pendennis, and has done away with the gardens that were to border the Bar Road frontage, softening the impact of the development.

When the plans went before Falmouth Town Council’s planning committee, Mrs Stevens, of Royalist Court in Port Pendennis, said: “The developer now finds it is too expensive to move the drains so he wants to move the block instead. The result is he is suggesting moving the building towards the town so it is now as far as he can go along Bar Road. It brings it in front of listed buildings in Bar Terrace.”

Cornwall councillor and Arwenack ward member, Geoffrey Evans, also attended the meeting and said he was trying to arrange a meeting with the planning officer to go over the new plans, but admitted: “I am not very happy about this moving.”

Councillor Steve Eva said: “In principle we have to get this site built on, but we have to make sure they build the right thing on there. From the information before us I’m going to recommend refusal because of the possible impact on neighbours.”

The committee agreed to recommend that Cornwall Council refuse the application. This is a stance backed up by comments left on the council’s planning website by local residents and Falmouth Civic Society.

Its secretary, Angela Beale, said the scheme is considered to be “overlarge and oppressive. She added: “It is too near the road and has lost the redeeming feature of the previous application, of the landscaping and gardens.”

The town’s conservation area advisory committee also objects due to the “height and over massing” and the loss of amenity area which would create a development “completely out of scale and character with the surrounding area.”

Resident Philip Oliver said: “It seems to us that the developers, in order to save the cost of diverting drains, have redesigned the whole layout of the buildings on the site. This would result in the building being moved close up to the adjacent properties on the west side, specifically Royalist Court in Port Pendennis.

“In the previously approved development the proposed building was kept at about 17 metres from the boundary fence. This ‘buffer space’ has now been reduced to 5.5 metres, taking up an area previously planned as garden and approved as such by the appeals officer.”

To see the full details of the planning application and all the comments made on it, go to www.cornwall.gov.uk and search for planning application PA14/11607.