A plan to build 77 “eyesore” flats in the centre of Bath is set to be decided next week.
How the new development could look on Wells Road | Image © Kosy Co Living
Developer Kosy Living is seeking permission to knock down a row of one-storey units off the bottom of Wells Road and build a four-storey “co-living” apartment building, with 77 studio apartments above two commercial units.
The building will be built of Bath stone with a “mansard roof inspired design”.
Council officers are recommending the plans be approved with some conditions, but 18 people have submitted objections urging Bath & North East Somerset Council’s planning committee to block the plans when it comes before them on Wednesday 28th August.
Jane Moss warned: “The existing commercial unit has aged kindly into a soft grey that merges with what trees and bushes exist nearby but the proposed 4-storey development would be unsightly and an incongruous eye-sore at the bottom of this row of Georgian houses.”
Thomas Robert Snelson warned that a large building in this location could damage the city’s World Heritage Site status, which specifically references the setting of the city in a hollow in the hills.
He said: “I cannot think of a single location more critical to this key part of Bath’s heritage status.
“No other part of Bath so completely embodies the notion of ‘where the countryside meets the city’ to the extent that this slogan is emblazoned on the well-trafficked pedestrian subway metres away from the proposed development.”
But planning officers said that, although it posed “a degree of harm” to the city’s heritage, the fact that there had previously been a Georgian house of similar size there was a mitigating factor.
Their report states: “Following careful review of harm posed and benefits of development, it is considered that heritage and landscape harm is outweighed by benefits in this instance.
“The development is found to provide a high level of residential accommodation on a relatively compact site without resulting in significant harm to surrounding populations, the local environment or surrounding highway network. This will represent efficient use of brownfield urban land.”
In a statement submitted with the application, Kosy Living said: “This co-living/co-working scheme would be the first of its kind in Bath, providing a much-needed and positive addition to the type and availability of rented residential accommodation within the city.
“It would provide an additional choice of housing for young, aspiring professionals and graduates, bringing with it the wellbeing benefits of being part of a community.”
Each of the studio apartments would have a fold-down bed, a moveable sofa, and kitchenette in one room, and a separate bathroom.
The 77 studios would also share three larger kitchen-dining rooms, a gym, rooftop terrace, and ground-floor co-working space, covered under one rental payment.
Kosy Living said that co-living aims to meet the needs of “generation rent”, as people stay in rental accommodation for longer periods of their lives, and aims to be “a neighbourhood within a neighbourhood”.
Each studio will have space to store a bicycle but the building will only have seven car parking spaces: four for the commercial units, one accessible space, one for the “car club”, and one for deliveries.
An original proposal for a 96-studio building was withdrawn by the applicant after the council warned, in their pre-application response, that it would be “an overly dominant and inappropriate addition to this part of the conservation area”.
Bath & North East Somerset Council’s planning committee will meet at 11am on Wednesday 28th August in the council chamber at Bath Guildhall.
John Wimperis, Local Democracy Reporter
