Flats plan for derelict offices in Leicester rejected

A planned conversion of a vacant city center office block cannot go ahead, Leicester City Council’s planning department has ruled. Around 24 flats were proposed for the derelict Southgate House offices in March this year.

A change of use application revealed the offer to create six flats each on the first, second, third and fourth floors of the building located on the corner of Southgate Street, Millstone Lane and Friar Lane. A change of use application is required when an applicant wishes to use a building for a purpose that falls within a different planning class to that currently permitted – in this case, offices for residential use.

However, planning officers at the council have now rejected the scheme. Their primary concern was that the applicant, Ishtiaq Latif, had not submitted a noise report with the plan.

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They said Millstone Lane behind the building was known for “night time uses”. There is also a pub next door which has “live music and comedy on some nights”. Without the report, officers said they could not be sure if work would need to be done to the office block to ensure any future residents would not be unacceptably disturbed.

Officers also said there were no storage details for the new homes. Some of the apartments had areas that “could be for built-in storage”, they added, but these were not specifically labeled as such in the plan.

Other apartments had no areas that “could be interpreted” as storage. This is against planning policy, they said.

However, despite their specific concerns, they did not find a problem with the general principle of the building being used for housing.

Each of the apartments was to be a single bed, with the plans suggesting that they would all have been created as studios. The applicant did not propose that the parking at the building be increased from the current four spaces, stating that the site is “well served” by public transport and public parking.

However, around 24 cycle spaces would have been included on the ground floor under the scheme. Council officers considered the number of car and cycle spaces to be acceptable as the site is in the town centre.