Architecturally insignificant building can't be demolished

Sunday 14 April 2024

Plans to knock down the old Army and Navy store on Retot Lane near Vazon, and replace it with a house, have been rejected because the proposed new build was going to be too big.

The landowner, Mr P Crowson has previously been given permission to convert the old shop - which was Albecq Stores until the 1970s - into a house, but earlier this year he asked for permission to replace it entirely.

The new application asked to demolish the existing building along with a section of outbuilding, so he could put up a new dwelling with associated works and erect a shed to the north boundary of the site.

The Development and Planning Authority told him last week that it was refusing planning permission because the application did not meet the criteria of planning Policy GP16(B) which concerns the Conversion of Redundant Buildings and Demolition and Redevelopment.

The former shop is currently a single storey flat roof building which sits on the corner of Retot Lane, which itself lies slightly inland from Vazon near the Albecq corner.

The existing building is of a "traditional, granite stone structure with a painted rendered appearance to the front" which the planning officers said is of "little architectural merit".

Pictured: The conflict with planning policy GP16(B) was given for the decision to refuse permission to demolish the old Army and Navy Store with a completely new development. 

Planning permission was granted last year to convert and alter the former shop building to a house.

That application included the creation of curtilage to serve the new dwelling through altering the existing domestic curtilage of Albecq Farm. That application had also included plans to use an existing outbuilding as storage for bicycles and gardening equipment.

The new application instead asked for permission to demolish both the shop and the outbuilding, with the planned dwelling built further into the site and away from the road instead. That new house would have been "a 'barn-like building of a similar form, scale and materials’ to complement the adjacent protected building".

However, permission has been refused because of the size of the proposed new build "in terms of floor area and volume and the inclusion of the existing outbuilding within the floor area of the new dwelling".

In response to concerns raised by the DPA, the agent has reduced the pitch of the roof and a store to the rear of the building was removed, along with another store on the ground floor being replaced in the plans by a covered courtyard.

Overall, the new plans represented designs for a house 17.6% larger than the previously approved conversion and the DPA decided it would be too large, and refused permission.