03/29/2024

Wales News Online

Local & National News for Wales

A FORMER hotel in Swansea can be turned into apartments, a planning inspector has said.
Swansea Council had, for the second time, turned down an application to convert the empty White House Hotel, Uplands, into five flats with a new two-storey rear extension.
Planning officers said the proposal didn’t provide an adequate standard of accommodation for future occupants of two of the flats because they’d directly look out onto the extension from their bedrooms.
Applicants Jos Struik of Edwin Jansen, of Surrey-based Real Estate Purchase Group Ltd, appealed the council’s decision.
Welsh Government-appointed planning inspector PJ Davies agreed that the light and outlook from the two flats in question would be limited.
But Ms Davies said because they were one-bedroom flats, the bedrooms were less significant than for shared or family accommodation.
“Both flats broadly comply with the council’s floorspace standards, and both would have spacious open plan kitchen and living areas at the front of the building,” said her decision report.
“These areas would have generous levels of light and outlook from a large bay window in the case of the ground floor flat, and four tall windows providing a dual aspect for the first floor flat.”
She concluded that in such circumstances the limitations of the bedrooms would not adversely affect the occupants.
The White House Hotel, on the corner of Nyanza Terrace and Eaton Crescent, had 14 bedrooms and was one of a diminishing number of independently-run hotels in Swansea before it closed.
The building lies within the Ffynone and Uplands Conservation Area.
A heritage impact assessment on behalf of the applicants said: “From a heritage perspective, the proposed development provides an opportunity to secure a sustainable future for the site, having been vacant and declining in condition for a number of years.
“The proposed development will retain the majority of the original elements of the façade that remain following the remedial works.”

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