A plan to convert the Harrogate office block Windsor House into 94 flats has been refused.
A Harrogate Borough Council report said not all of the flats would benefit from adequate natural light.
Owner of the building, Boultbee Brooks, wanted to turn the seven-storey building on Cornwall Road into 94 flats consisting of 14 one-bedroom and 80 two-bedroom properties.
There have been two previous applications to convert Windsor House into flats, in 2014 and 2017, which were both approved under permitted development rights.
However, a condition was attached to both applications that said the conversion must be completed within three years.
First introduced in 2013 as a way to mitigate the UK’s housing shortage, office-to-residential permitted development rights make it easier for owners of office blocks to convert them into homes.
With the building still being used by local businesses, a fresh application was submitted in 2020, which would have given the owner another three years to complete the conversion.
But this time, the council’s chief planner, John Worthington, deemed it not applicable for permitted development due to what he said was a lack of natural light in some of the rooms.
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The Windsor House application received an objection from a tenant of the building, who said the conversion would “drive businesses out of Harrogate”.
The objection said:
“It took us months to find office space in Harrogate within a reasonable walking distance of town. Please think of business in Harrogate, it can’t all be about residential. We need places to work too, Harrogate needs commercial business.”
Windsor House, which is located in the Duchy estate area, is one of the most distinctive landmarks in Harrogate.
Built in 1900 overlooking Valley Gardens, it was originally the Grand Hotel until it became offices in the 1980s.
The Stray Ferret contacted Boultbee Brooks for a response but did not receive one at the time of publication.
