A GARAGE development could create a dangerous precedent, parish councillors said.

South Swindon Parish Council raised their objections to an application for the change of use of an existing annexe on Glenwood Close, off Croft Road, into a separate home.

Agents for the developer said in papers sent to the borough council the annexe had been used for the past 15 years as a separate one-bedroom home. They added: “The annexe was originally granted with a proviso that it was to be used solely as an annexe to No. 12 [Glenwood Close] but has been used independently since then.”

Councillors criticised the planning application. Coun Neil Hopkins said: “It’s a close with a lot of bungalows. If you can split off a garage and create a separate dwelling everybody in the road and probably everybody in similar road would be able to make similar changes; first of all convert the garage, then look for planning consent for it to be made into a dwelling.

“It would open the floodgates to inappropriate development in roads that are just not right for splitting every property into a number of separate dwellings.”

Nadine Watts, an Old Town parish councillor, added: “It’s the circumventing of the process I have an issue with and it would set a dangerous precedent.”

Vice-chairman of the planning committee Patrick Herring said the agents had “cheerfully admitted” to breaching the terms of previous planning permissions by saying the annexe had been occupied by someone other than the main homeowner.

One local resident objected to the plans, saying it was “unsuitable to have a residential unit in the small back garden of a quiet and established residential area”.

A. R. Mulaney wrote in a letter to Swindon Borough Council planners: “I do not believe that the annexe has been used as a residential unit as stated. There have been no sightings of cars parked on the space outside of the annexe and neither any evidence of anyone living there as noted by the neighbours, but if true then it is clearly in contradiction to the terms of the original agreement and should not be used as an argument to grant retrospective permission.”