Case study / Coventry

Bennetts Road, a shop that needed homes above it.

A retail-only scheme faced a sequential test. Mixed use answered it.

The corner as proposed: a convenience store at ground floor with six flats above, seen from the Bennetts Road junction. An indicative visualisation of the current design, not a photograph. No planning application has been submitted and there is no consent.

The facts

Mixed-use and retail architects, Coventry.

A surplus NHS clinic on a corner inside the Keresley Sustainable Urban Extension, redesigned as a convenience store with six homes above. Designed to RIBA Stage 3, with the application still in preparation.

The project

A store below. Six homes above.

6homes above the store

Location: Former Keresley Clinic, Bennetts Road North, Keresley, Coventry CV7 8HY
Client: SRM Construction Services Ltd
Setting: Keresley urban extension, allocation H2:1. Flood Zone 1, out of centre for retail
Proposal: Demolish the clinic; a 356 sqm Class E store, six flats over, substation relocated
Our scope: Architect and planning agent, RIBA Stages 1 to 3
Status: Design complete at Stage 3, application in preparation

Nothing has been submitted and no consent is in place. Every drawing and visualisation here is indicative and subject to planning.

The brief

A commercial idea, on an awkward corner.

SRM Construction Services Ltd bought the former Keresley Clinic, a single-storey NHS building on a prominent hard-standing corner where Bennetts Road North meets Thompsons Road. The clinic had been declared surplus to healthcare need and had stood empty since 2020, with an alternative surgery about seventy-five metres to the north.

The ambition was plain: anchor the corner with a neighbourhood convenience store for the growing urban extension, and put homes over it to make a tight plot pay. We were appointed to turn that into a deliverable, submission-ready application on a site under 0.2 hectares.

Route: A full planning application to Coventry City Council, in preparation
Our role: Architect and planning agent, coordinating the consultant team through RIBA Stages 1 to 3

The schedule

356 square metres, six homes, twenty-one spaces.

Store: 356 sqm / 3,832 sqft, Class E, open plan
Homes: 6 flats at first floor, off a central core
Mix: 1 × 1-bed 1-person, 4 × 1-bed 2-person, 1 × 2-bed 3-person
Unit sizes: 39 sqm to 61 sqm
Retail parking: 14 spaces: 11 standard, 1 with an electric vehicle charge point, 1 parent and child, 1 blue badge
Residential parking: 7 spaces: 6 allocated and 1 visitor
Ancillary: Plant room 5 sqm, bin store 11 sqm, covered cycle store, all to the rear
Storeys: Two, with the upper floor set back

Areas from our accommodation schedule at RIBA Stage 3. All six flats meet the Nationally Described Space Standards and several are dual aspect. The figures will be locked to the drawings as submitted.

The planning journey

A stalled shop, reframed.

Planning journey for Bennetts Road, Keresley: a retail-only pre-application by others answered by Coventry City Council in March 2024; Rickett Architects appointed in July 2025; the scheme reframed to mixed use in late 2025; the plot optimised to six homes and fourteen retail spaces in early 2026; RIBA Stage 3 completed in April 2026; the full application in preparation from mid 2026; and submission to Coventry City Council marked as the next step, still open

The open markers are the ones that have not happened. The bracket is our work: reframing the scheme, then engineering the plot around the anchor requirement.

The scheme

Two frontages, one building.

A red brick base holding the shop, a set-back upper floor holding the homes, and a plot engineered around fourteen retail spaces the operator would not go without.

Site plan

Everything, on 0.2 hectares.

The store fronts Thompsons Road at the junction. Parking runs down the western edge, servicing and the bin, cycle and plant stores sit to the rear, and the substation moves off the corner.

The proposed layout, drawing 100D. Twenty-one spaces and all the servicing, kept off both street frontages.

Street elevation

A domestic scale on a commercial base.

The ground floor is a solid red brick base with recessed panels and soldier-course detailing. Above it the residential floor is broken into gables and set back, so the building reads at the two-storey scale of its neighbours, not as a retail box.

The Bennetts Road frontage. The banded course is the join between the two volumes: shop below, homes above.

Floor plans

An open shop, and six flats off one core.

The retail floor is left as one open span so an operator can fit it out. The residential entrance, stair, plant, bins and cycles are pushed to the rear. Upstairs, six flats come off a single central core, all to the Nationally Described Space Standards.

First floor above, ground floor below. The shop is one span; the homes are stacked on the quiet side of it.

The design cue

The gable came from up the road.

A shop with flats over it can read as a commercial box on a residential street. The reference is the library on Bennetts Road: a gable riding over a glazed frontage, broken here into smaller gables.

Keresley library on Bennetts Road, the building the form answers to. An illustrative view, not a photograph.

Illustrative view of Keresley library on Bennetts Road: a broad pitched gable clad in pale grey timber boarding with a band of clerestory glazing under the eaves, over a fully glazed ground-floor frontage with slender mullions showing the bookshelves inside, a flat-roofed entrance canopy to the right, a clipped hedge along the pavement and a large tree behind

The challenge

A shop that had to justify itself.

The clinic could go. The shop was the problem.

Pre-application advice accepted the loss of the clinic, then set a hurdle a shop could not clear alone: an out-of-centre store must first pass a sequential test against the empty units in the nearest centre.

Discuss a mixed-use site

Close view of the proposed corner at Bennetts Road, Keresley: a red brick elevation with tall shopfront glazing at ground floor beneath a projecting brick soldier-course band, glass-balustrade balconies to the first-floor flats above, low planting along the pavement and a young street tree in front

So the answer was not a better shop. It was a different building. Putting homes over the store made the proposal part of an allocated housing site rather than a bare out-of-centre retail unit, and gave the sequential case something to stand on.

The full story

The site is the former Keresley Clinic, a single-storey NHS building on a hard-standing corner where Bennetts Road North meets Thompsons Road. The clinic closed in 2020, was declared surplus to healthcare need by the local integrated care board, sat on the government register of surplus public land without interest from any other public body, and has an alternative surgery about seventy-five metres to the north. The land was removed from the Green Belt in 2017 and now sits inside the Keresley Sustainable Urban Extension, allocation H2:1, which is allocated for a minimum of three thousand one hundred homes.

A retail-only pre-application, a single shop of 391 sqm, had already been through the council before we were involved. It was not our scheme. The council's answer, in March 2024, was split. The loss of the health facility was accepted. The principle of retail was not: the site sits outside any defined centre, so Policies R3 and R4 of the Coventry Local Plan engage and a sequential assessment has to test the empty units in the nearest centre, at Holbrook Lane, before this corner can even be considered. That is a test a standalone convenience store can fail outright, and it is why the scheme had stalled.

There was a second fact in the file that mattered, and it concerns other people's land, not this corner. The urban extension was allocated two local centres, one to the south and one to the north. The southern one was carried through to reserved matters on the site it was allocated to. The northern one was expected around the Thompsons Farm land; consent on that separate site, in February 2022, allowed the whole of it to come forward as housing with no local centre required. So the growing northern half of the extension had been left with no everyday retail at all. Neither of those decisions relates to this site, which has no consent of any kind.

We reframed the proposal from retail-only to mixed use, and that was the move that unlocked the corner. Six homes over the store turned a bare out-of-centre shop into development on an allocated housing site, and gave the corner a frontage to both streets. The sequential and retail evidence was prepared by the planning and retail consultants; our part was the building and the case the building made.

Then the plot fought back. A national convenience operator will not take a unit without a fixed quantum of parking, and on a site under 0.2 hectares every retail space competed with the homes above. An electrical substation stood in the way, with National Grid cables crossing the site. The root protection areas of trees just outside the boundary overlapped the sensible line for the access. Two established building lines govern the corner, and neighbouring windows set the separation distances. The prospective anchor operator also changed more than once during the design, and each change moved the parking and the floor area the building had to deliver.

What we did

Reframed the scheme, then engineered the plot.

Two pieces of work. One changed what was being applied for; the other made it fit on the land. Both were needed before an application could be written at all.

The reframe

Mixed use changed the question.

Problem: A standalone out-of-centre shop had to clear a retail sequential test before the principle of retail was accepted at all
Move: Six homes over the store, so the proposal became development on an allocated housing site rather than a bare retail unit
Context: The extension's northern local centre, expected on a separate site nearby, was consented for housing instead, leaving that half without everyday retail
Frontage: The scheme would front both streets on a corner plot that has stood as hard standing since the clinic closed

The comparison was never 391 sqm of shop against nothing. It was a shop that could not be justified on its own, against a building that could.

Engineering the plot

Twenty-one spaces, under 0.2 hectares.

Parking: The operator's fourteen spaces held in full, plus seven for the homes, sized with the transport consultants
Access: The existing Thompsons Road access reused for the parking behind, plus a new access off Bennetts Road
Substation: Relocated clear of the corner, so the street scene is not built around a National Grid enclosure
Trees: Root protection areas of trees outside the boundary, with access and parking laid out around them
Amenity: Massing and separation set against neighbouring windows on both frontages, upper floor stepped back

Two building lines, two frontages and a fixed retail parking number. The layout is what is left standing when all three are satisfied at once.

Our part, and where it stands

Stage 3 done. Nothing submitted.

Ours: The building, the site strategy and the RIBA Stage 1 to 3 package, as architect and planning agent
Not ours: The sequential assessment, transport evidence and planning statement, by specialist consultants
Not our scheme: The 2024 retail-only pre-application of 391 sqm, prepared by others before we were appointed
The operator: A prospective national convenience anchor. Securing a tenant is the client's decision, not ours
Not a consent: No application has been submitted and no permission granted

Designed under the National Planning Policy Framework as it stood before its replacement on 17 August 2026; any application would be determined against the new text.