PERMISSION has been granted for a motorcycle training school to operate from a youth club more than nine years after it started trading.

Planning officers at Stockton Borough Council only realised the ACE Motor Cycle Training School was operating from the Chapel Road Youth Centre in Billingham when a member of the public complained.

It also emerged in a Planning Committee meeting held today (Wednesday) that the council’s own motorcycle training school does not have planning permission to operate.

ACE operates from the youth centre building and former school playground in the older part of Billingham, a designated conservation area near the Grade I-listed St Oswald’s Church.

A ‘change of use’ planning permission should have been sought, but after nearly ten years the authority was alerted that planning permission had not be given.

A total of eight people then wrote to the council complaining the motorcycle school was noisy, in an inappropriate area and a potential road safety hazard.

One nearby resident, John Moore, spoke at the council meeting to object.

He said: “The biggest objection is that this school contravenes the conservation use area and has no planning approval.”

Janet Sockett also objected saying her home had been damaged in an accident involving one of the school’s motorcycles and she had been told the training school was temporary.

She would not allow her great nieces and nephews to play out for safety worries.

She said: “You can hear instructors screaming over the sound of the engines. I put up with this noise from eight in the morning, six days a week.”

Owner of ACE Motor Cycle Training School, William Rimmer, said they had always liaised with people and had improved security to the benefit of youths using the youth club. The business stopped operating on Sundays and Bank Holidays on request and did not start the motorcycle engines until 8.30am, even pushing bikes to the site.

Colin Lambert, who also works at ACE, pointed out that 16 letters of support had been sent to the council. There had only ever been one, minor, safety incident in over nine years. The school employed two and sometimes three instructors who could lose their jobs.

He said: “We hoped we had reached a happy medium with the residents and we will work with them in the future.”

Permission for the training school was granted by eight votes to three.

The council’s own motorcycle school has been operating for six months from a former transport depot on Sedgefield Way, but change of use planning application has not been granted. The authority has temporarily ceased operating while the issue is resolved.