A DEVELOPER’S attempt to overturn the council’s rejection of its flats plan has been denied by a planning inspector.

Applicant Neil Chadda of Vevo Partnership wanted to convert a vacant Best-one convenience store on Altwood Road, Maidenhead, into six studio flats, but Royal Borough planning officers rejected the scheme.

They believed the apartments’ internal floor space did not meet national and the borough’s design guide, resulting in a ‘cramped and substandard’ space for future occupiers. They also called the design ‘poor’.

Objectors also said the flats are of ‘poor design’ and were concerned that no car parking spaces are proposed.

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But the developer believed the council’s decision was ‘unsound’ because the plans for prior approval were submitted before new planning regulations where the requirement to provide the minimum internal floorspace or the nationally described space would not apply to the scheme.

They also wanted the council to pay for their appeal costs as they believed the Royal Borough ‘behaved unreasonably’ for refusing the planning application and defending the appeal.

Planning inspector Rachael Pipkin found that the scheme, due to the inadequacy of its internal space, would not provide satisfactory living conditions for future occupiers and would therefore fail to achieve a good standard of amenity for future users as well as it would amount to a poor design.

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She also dismissed the developer’s cost appeal and concluded the council had not behaved unreasonably in refusing the prior approval on a design matter in relation to internal arrangements and that an appeal could not have been avoided.