PLANS have been submitted to convert the first floor of two city centre businesses into flats.

The application is for 1 Queen's House, on the corner of Queen Street and New Canal, and positioned between Fish Row and New Canal.

The proposals would change the first floor of Phase Eight and Moss Bros. to two new apartments, both of which will provide two bedrooms.

The shops would remain in place on the ground floor.

'Numerous benefits in the public interest'

The upper floors of the building are already flats, having been converted from a previous office use, and the proposals would represent an extension of those flats.

The planning, design, access and heritage statement in support of the statement says that the scheme has been designed specifically to have a "minimum impact upon the historic fabric of the building", adding: "It will not result in any change to the external fabric, all of the changes being internal to the building."

Existing First Floor Plan A

Existing First Floor Plan A

The statement says: "Those previous interventions in the building have indicated that it is possible to introduce a similar extent of change to the building as is currently proposed without causing harm to the significance of the heritage asset."

The statement adds: "The proposals will not result in any external changes to the building, while internal alterations to the grade II* listed building in order to create the new apartments will be limited, principally involving the creation of new internal partitions across existing open plan parts of the building, which are in themselves modern additions to the historic building."

It also says that the development is "sustainable" and that there are "numerous benefits in the public interest and no significant adverse impacts".

History

Queen's House is a 16th century, Grade II listed building, although the planning statement says that "much of the original historic fabric of Queens House was lost following a fire during the 1970s".

During the reconstruction of the building following that fire, the original construction was replaced with a steel frame.

The statements adds that, as a result of this reconstruction, the upper floors of the building and the shop units are of modern rather than historic construction, with the internal parts of the shops comprising open plan spaces.

There is a long history of planning applications for this site.

The most recent was in 2015, for the change of use and conversion of part of the first, second and third floors of the existing building to "residential use comprising seven two bed apartments".

To read the plans in full, click here

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