FRINTON residents and councillors have won their battle to keep an NHS dental service in town.

Southern Dental beat opposition from council officers who had recommended their planned new site in half of the former Spar supermarket should remain as a shop.

Tuesday’s Planning Committee unanimously backed the move, which happy studio staff said yesterday was expected by Christmas.

Practice manager Siobhan Williams said the studio has to move within four months.

Allowing the move would “enable residents to keep an NHS Dentist,” she told the meeting.

Tendring Council’s head of planning Catch Bicknell said the proposed site at 18 Connaught Avenue was “prime shopping frontage” and council policy was to save such sites for retail use.

Giles Watling, Tendring Council’s portfolio holder for planning and regeneration, recalled how Connaught Avenue was seen as the “Bond Street of East England” and there was a need “to promote high quality outlets in Frinton.”

Mr Watling wanted to keep an NHS dentist in town, but believed there were other suitable sites in Frinton available, with easy parking.

However, lan Eldret of Frinton Residents Association said the site had been vacant ‘”for years” and people had signed a petition supporting the dental studio plan.

Town Councillor Andrea Cossens said many residents in Frinton were infirm and needed a ground floor dental studio. Shop owners wanted the studio believing it would attract shoppers to town.

Neighbouring councillor Anne Davies agreed and added: “The books full at a local dentist at the other side of the gates.”

Deputy chair Rosemary Heaney said: “An NHS dentist is terribly hard to find. We really don’t want to lose one.”

Coun Laurie Gray said with every planning application, concerns about doctors and dentists are “at the top of everybody’s list, so why lose a service?”

“We are not changing Connaught Avenue, we are improving it,” he added.