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A second attempt to turn a distinctive building into a shared house, turning garages into charity offices, and installing solar panels on a village hall are among the schemes people are trying to get planning permission for in Bath and North East Somerset and North Somerset.
Every week, the two neighbouring unitary authorities receive hundreds of planning applications and we have selected some of the most interesting proposals.
All planning applications are available for public inspection on the respective council’s website. Most plans will be decided by council planning officers, but some of the most significant or contentious will go before the councils’ planning committee.
Planning committees are made up of elected councillors but decisions should be decided based on the council’s planning policies, not local politics — although it doesn’t always turn out that way.
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Fresh plans to turn distinctive shop into shared house
New plans have been drawn up to turn a distinctive “Flemish-inspired” vacant Subway sandwich shop in Weston-super-Mare into a shared house.
Number 131 High Street, in the Grove Park area of town, is a Victorian building which used to be occupied by Subway, but has sat empty for at least three years, and suffered vandalism on the first floor. An application was submitted in January to turn it into a 12-bed HMO (house in multiple occupation) but the council refused planning permission.
The original plans would have included bedrooms on the first floor and the ground floor but Avon and Somerset Police’s Designing Out Crime team objected to the plans, warning that anyone on the ground floor would have been at risk of “opportunistic theft” as ground floor windows were directly by the lane.
Now new plans have been submitted for the house to be turned into an eight-bed HMO instead. A statement submitted with the application said: “The proposal for 131 High Street will bring a vacant building back into use which will have a positive effect on the street and conservation area. The blocked up windows to Old Post Office Lane would be reopened and the façade rendered under a new pitched roof, all enhancements to the area.”
No bedrooms would be located on the ground floor, which would have an office and communal space. The Designing Out Crime team had no objection to the plans, subject to it meeting some requirements.
But others have been less impressed, with 12 objections submitted through the council’s planning portal. One person wrote: “This is a ludicrous proposition, in the middle of a rapidly developing hospitality area of Weston. The last thing the North end of the High street needs are more HMOs.This would be disastrous for the current business owners in the area.”
HMO designation covers a wide range of house types where the occupants do not officially form one household. Some HMOs may essentially be a family home shared by friends, while others may be more similar to a block of small flats with some shared facilities.
You can view and comment on the application here.
Garages could become charity’s HQ
Three garages used for storage in Bath could soon be turned into offices for a charity.
In 2022, the Liz and Jack Daniel Foundation won planning permission to turn three garages near the Royal United Hospital in Bath into affordable accommodation units for workers at the hospital. But the scheme was rendered “unfeasible” after construction costs went higher than expected.
Now the charity has submitted a new application to Bath and North East Somerset Council to turn the garages into office space.
A statement submitted with the application said: “To ensure the smooth running of the charity, office space is required, and we now submit an application to convert the existing garages to form a well-insulated structure suitable for the day to day administration of the charity.”
Liz Daniel was a landlady who used her rental income to buy equipment for the RUH. She set up the Liz and Jack Daniel Foundation, also named after her late husband, before she died and it has continued to use the profits from her rental portfolio for charitable means.
In 2022, it donated £100k to keep the Compassionate Companions palliative care service running.
You can view and comment on the plans here.
Solar panels for village hall
Peasedown St John is planning to install solar panels on its village hall.
Beacon Hall opened in the North East Somerset village in 1995, hosting clubs and events in the village — and the village’s parish council.
Now the Parish Council has submitted a prior approval request to install 38 solar panels on the south facing roof of the hall. The panels would each be 500W panels and four batteries would be able to store up to 10kWh of power.
You can view and comment on the plans here.
