Refused on noise in 2022. Eight apartments, built and sold.
Cross Street toward the Willes Road junction. Visualisation of the consented design.
A refused site in the Royal Leamington Spa Conservation Area, taken from the first feasibility sketch through to the last apartment sold.
Refused in July 2022. Consented six months later, on the same plot.
GSK Developments owned a worn-out former commercial building on Cross Street, a narrow service street in the heart of the conservation area. It already held prior approval to convert the offices to flats, so a conversion was the fallback. It was a poor one: cramped apartments inside a structure at the end of its life, with most of the site's value left on the table.
The better answer was to start again. Demolish, and replace it with eight well planned apartments across three storeys, inside the same footprint, on a plot with no spare ground in any direction.
From a refusal on residential amenity to a consent at committee six months later. Refusal ref W/22/0125, consent ref W/22/1546, varied by a Section 73, ref W/23/1018.
Eight apartments behind a white rendered Regency frontage, with a small rear courtyard doing the work that won the consent.
Painted brickwork, an offices to let sign, and a roof part built from asbestos panels. The offices had stood largely vacant.
Three storeys behind a white rendered frontage, the top floor set back. Visualisation of the consented design, from the same camera position.
The top floor is set back on every side, so from the pavement the street still reads at two storeys. Visualisation of the consented design.
A refusal on amenity questions the site itself.
With a public car park alongside and a four-storey office pressing in at the rear, the council concluded that anyone living here would have to keep their windows shut. The application was refused on that single ground.
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Four fixed constraints on one plot: a closely guarded conservation area, a Grade II* listed neighbour opposite, no spare ground in any direction, and a noise source on two sides.
This site had a history. Seven applications had been made on it since 2015. Two were refused, two were withdrawn, and the only consent anyone had secured on it was a prior approval to convert the offices to flats. Almost everything about the plot resisted development: one of the most closely guarded conservation areas in the Midlands, Grade II* listed neighbours opposite, and no spare ground in any direction. The town council objected. Neighbours objected.
The decisive problem was noise. With a public car park alongside and a four-storey office at the rear, the council's environmental health officers concluded that future residents would be forced to live behind permanently closed windows. In July 2022 the application was refused on that single ground. A refusal on residential amenity is one of the hardest to reverse, because it does not quibble with a detail. It questions whether the site should hold homes at all.
The answer was architectural rather than acoustic. The habitable rooms were turned to face Cross Street, and a small internal courtyard was cut into the back of the building. It screens the car park and gives the homes a sheltered, quiet facade where a window can be opened for fresh air without letting the noise in. That single move is what made the site developable at all. Without it the plot would have stayed stuck at the modest office to residential conversion it already had approval for. With it, the environmental health team no longer objected, and in January 2023 the committee granted eight new apartments on a site refused six months earlier.
Rickett Architects was architect and agent for every stage, so the setback and the recovery sat with the same practice and the risk never changed hands.
One design input unlocked the site. Without it the plot stays a modest office conversion.
We wrote the heritage statement and ran the case through to determination.
Eight apartments on a site that had been refused planning permission, complete and sold.
Rickett Architects were persistent in ensuring we maximised the development potential. Working with Rickett Architects for several years, we trust them to always deliver despite the challenges the council throw at us.
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