A LANDMARK Victorian vicarage in Oswaldtwistle may be transformed into a large doctors' practice.

Hyndburn council planners have been asked to sanction the change of use of the detached villa in Union Road into a surgery.

The house would undergo extensive building work to provide a waiting room and reception area in a single-storey extension.

The group practice which wants to take over the former St Paul's Vicarage will find out on Wednesday if its bid has been successful. Planning officers will tell the development services committee that the medics also want to build a car park in the grounds, which would mean one tree being axed.

However, five other mature trees may be damaged by the development and require felling. The doctors have agreed to replacement planting.

Local residents have complained that visitors to nearby Oswaldtwistle Mills and large delivery wagons already cause traffic congestion and that local streets are already filled with cars between 8.30am and 9.15am and between 3.15pm and 3.45pm when children are dropped off and collected from St Paul's School.

Planning officers said in a report that the use of the old vicarage as a doctors' surgery was likely to generate extra traffic and parking.

Six full-time and four part-time staff would be based at the premises.

A number of trees surrounded the site and made a valuable contribution to the urban landscape, the officers added. In order to mitigate possible damage, the doctors had agreed, the planning report indicates, to surfacing four parking bays on the proposed car park with "grasscrete" instead of Tarmac, which would have affected tree roots.

Members of the development services committee are being recommended to approve the surgery, on condition that no trees are felled or damaged without written consent and that a satisfactory landscaping scheme is submitted.