The planning appeals board has approved a permit for a kindergarten school in a basement in Kappara, overturning two previous decisions by the planning authority to reject the proposal.

The Kappara Administration Committee insists this new school will only contribute to increase the chaos and hardship for residents

The size of the school was not going to create any problems of noise or disturb the neighbours, the board said.

The Kappara Administrative Committee condemned the decision, saying that other nearby schools had shown that the “infrastructure can’t support all traffic generated, resulting in traffic jams.

“This new school will only contribute to increasethis chaos and hardship for residents.”

The application was first filed in 2004 and the planning authority had refused to grant a permit, arguing it was unacceptable to have a change of use to a commercial development in an area with detached and semi-detached houses. The planning authority insisted that the kindergarten would create noise and traffic that would disturb the neighbours and conflict with policies for the area.

The project also failed to provide parking spaces and would exacerbate problems of congestion and road hazards, the authority had said.

In his appeal, the applicant argued that the project could not be considered a “commercial development” because it was a kindergarten school which was regulated by different planning policies.

He made reference to a specific policy for nurseries and kindergartens that said these should be “appropriately located in residential areas”, preferably in “villa areas”.

The appeals board noted that the size of the kindergarten school was not going to create any problems of noise or disturb the neighbours.

Also, the “alleged congestion” would be very limited because the drop-off and pick-up time was of just a few minutes and the size of the school was not going to generate a lot of traffic.