An appeal has been lodged against an Exeter City Council decision to refuse the addition of a fifth storey to a four-storey city centre scheme that was approved eleven years ago but has not been built.
Proposals to increase the height of the building, which fronts onto Fore Street but extends down West Street towards Grade I listed St Mary Steps church, were rejected at a meeting of the council planning committee in September last year.
They prompted 140 objections, which cited a wide range of potential impacts including the loss of commercial space on the ground and lower ground floors. The building currently houses Rochelle’s Curtains & Blinds in Fore Street and Crankhouse Coffee in West Street.
The scheme’s architect expressed surprise at the volume of objections, said the majority had been orchestrated by Crankhouse Coffee and claimed that those who were opposed to the scheme must have misunderstood it.
The original plans were to rework the existing buildings, adding one full and one stepped-back storey to the West Street elevation and removing all commercial space to provide thirteen flats.
The revised scheme included the addition of another storey and the enlargement of the top floor with reconfigured, reduced commercial space below. It would also provide thirteen flats, all for rent, none of which would be affordable.
Illustrative West Street elevations of approved vs refused schemes. Image: Exeter City Council.
A council planning officer recommended approval of the revised scheme, saying that the additional storey would not have significant visual or heritage impacts and that the changes would not increase the loss of privacy, light or amenity to neighbours compared with the original plans.
Council planning committee members saw the revised scheme proposals differently. Steve Warwick said that the decision to approve the original plans had shocked many people and that another storey would add insult to injury.
Diana Moore, speaking on behalf of all three councillors for St David’s ward, in which the building stands, said the developers’ claim that the additional storey would have limited impact was “very subjective”.
Andy Ketchin added that the much larger single step down from the proposed additional storey to adjacent buildings meant the compatibility with the surrounding area present in the original plans had been lost.
Height, scale, massing, the impact on nearby heritage assets and the outlook and amenity for neighbouring residential dwellings were all also cited in the resulting council refusal notice.
Corner of Fore Street and West Street with St Mary Steps church in the background
The original redevelopment plans were approved in January 2013 and full planning permission granted the following month. Consent was conditional on development commencing within three years.
Two years later a council planning officer accepted minor preparation works for a basement bin store as sufficient to constitute commencement and the planning permission became permanent.
However no further redevelopment works took place. The original applicant died during the pandemic and the buildings were sold on to a new developer with planning consent intact.
The original architect was commissioned to prepare the revised plans.
Illustrative view of revised proposals
The architect claims, in a statement justifying the appeal against the council’s refusal of those plans, that planning committee members rejected them because of a “political reaction to 139 objectors and a ward member opposing the application”.
The statement says that they did so to “appease the weight of objectors’ orchestrated opinion and satisfy their own predisposition against a scheme their authority previously approved”, adding that their refusal was “if not malevolent, certainly misguided”.
It also says that the decision was based on a “retrospective reassessment” of the previously-approved plans arrived at by “viewing of the proposals as a whole, rather than merely assessing the revised section relating to the application”.
Adding that “none of these are legitimate planning grounds for refusal” it concludes, in effect, that the council planning officer’s recommendation to approve the revised proposals should simply have been passed.
It doesn’t explain in what circumstances, if any, councillors might make a decision at variance with officer recommendations as elected planning committee members.
The council’s response is that the officer’s report was not a “clear-cut position of approval for the scheme” and that, because a decade had passed between the original and revised proposals, committee discussion of both was relevant to its decision.
It adds that the committee’s refusal reasons were correctly based on material increases in height, massing and scale that would result from the revised scheme alongside its conclusion that they would cause significant harm.
A planning inspector will decide the appeal later this year.
