Bournemouth Borough Council: Pure Town Planning are delighted with their latest approval to convert the first and second floor of a property on Southbourne Grove high street from a gym into 10 self-contained one-bedroom flats. The plans were prepared by Tony Holt Design.
Due to the site location, there were no off-street car parking spaces available for the 10 flats. The application was accompanied by a supporting statement from JPC Highways showing that the proposed use would in fact result in a lower amount of traffic when compared to the existing gym. Pure Town Planning also argued that the site is in a highly sustainable location with shops, services, job opportunities and local transport within the vicinity of the site and as such the zero provision was considered entirely acceptable by the Highways Department.
The next issue to overcome was to justify the loss of the gym, as it was considered by the Council to be the loss of a community facility – and hence resisted by planning policy. Pure Town Planning attacked this two-fold. First, we first demonstrated that the gym was running at loss, the first floor gym had been vacant for the last ten months despite extensive marketing and hence was probably not a great location for a gym. Then we also showed that within Southbourne Grove High Street, many of the properties have residential units above the ground floor commercial use, so residential would not be out of character on this site.
With these issues overcome, the Bournemouth Borough Council Case Officer was in a position to recommend approval, much to the delight of the applicant.
As you can see, here at Pure Town Planning, we like nothing more than securing our clients planning approvals. If you are working on a large residential development and are looking for a firm who will work tirelessly to steer your development through the planning process and secure that all-important planning permission, then why not give us a call on 01202 585524 or send us an email to info@puretownplanning.co.uk for a FREE 30 minute consultation.