Rosepark boss lodges plan for luxury home in `Millionaire’s Row’

Apr 28 2011 Hamilton Advertiser

ROSEPARK Nursing Home boss Thomas Balmer has lodged plans for a £1m house in one of Bothwell’s most exclusive areas.

His application was lodged on April 7, less than a fortnight before he was severely criticised for failings that led to the death of 14 old folk in a fire at the home seven years ago.

The timing of the application has been described as “either insensitive or cynical” by Michael McMahon, MSP for Hamilton North and Bellshill at the time of the blaze in January 2004.

The Balmers insist timing was a “coincidence”.

According to South Lanarkshire Council documents, Mr Balmer, of Royal Gardens, Sovereign Gate, Bothwell, plans a four-bedroom, detached house, at plot 17 in the village’s Earls Gate.

The house will feature on the ground floor a double garage, dining room, ‘’formal lounge’, kitchen/breakfast room, livingroom/television room, and downstairs shower.

On the first floor, two of the bedrooms have ensuite facilities and there’s a ‘family bathroom’ next to another bedroom.

Sliding doors from the living/television room open on to a sun terrace and the property has three parking spaces as well as a double garage.

A letter to the council from Mr Balmer’s architects, Munro Associates, explains that the nursing home boss and his arborculturalist have “made representations...with reference to the felling and replacement of the protected tree currently in the rear garden of the plot”.

Although the application for the house is in the name of Thomas Balmer, sources say it is likely to be occupied by a member of their extended family.

Built in the 1960s, Earls Gate is a cul-de-sac dubbed ‘Millionaire’s Row’. It is close to Bothwell Castle.

New plots became available following the decision by the council in 2009 to approve plans for 18 luxury homes on the site of three substantial properties, two of which were mysteriously destroyed by fire.

County property experts say Earls Gate plots cost in the region of £300,000 and completed properties there are likely to be worth over £1m. An Earls Gate property recently sold for £1½m.

Mr McMahon, Labour Party candidate for Uddingston and Bellshill in the forthcoming Holyrood election, said: “It was insensitive to lodge the plans at this time.

“The Balmers must have known that the outcome of the FAI was about to be published and there would be adverse publicity around them.

“If they allowed the application to go through as part of strategy to get all the bad news out at the same time then it shows a degree of cynicism.”

However, a spokesman for the Balmers said: “This planning application has been in the pipeline for more than a year.

“That it appeared in the public domain at this point is sheer coincidence.”

Last week, Sheriff Principal Brian Lockhart published the finding of the Fatal Accident Inquiry into the Rosepark charity.

In a 1000-page report, he found that the home’s management of fire safety was “systematically and seriously defective”.

Faulty wiring, in a cupboard in which aerosols were stored, started the fire.

And problems with the home’s construction, which Thomas Balmer himself managed, were found to have contributed to the fire’s deadly outcome.

Three attempts were made to prosecute Mr Balmer, his wife Anne and son Alan who had run Rosepark and their other care home, Croftbank, Uddingston as a partnership.

However, proceedings were thrown out because of a loophole in the law concerning prosecution of dissolved partnerships.

Prosecutors last week admitted that the three Balmers had been granted immunity from prosecution over the fire for agreeing to cooperate with the FAI.