Apartment plans for former charity shop rejected

Plans to convert a vacant city centre premises into apartments have been rejected by Wrexham Council.

An application for the former Nightingale House charity shop, at 36 Brook Street, was submitted to the local authority at the start of the year.

It had proposed that the building was converted into a mix of one and two bedroom apartments, with an element of retail use retained on the ground floor.

The plans also included an extension to the rear of the building to house two of the apartments.

However the application has been rejected by Wrexham Council’s chief planning officer, David Fitzsimon, who concluded that the proposed development “would result in an unacceptable loss of light to the occupants of nearby residential units on Well Street” which would be to the detriment of residential amenity.

Mr Fitzsimon also concluded: “Insufficient information has been submitted to demonstrate that the proposed development would not result in an increase in phosphate levels which would be harmful to the River Dee and Bala Lake Special Area of Conservation (SAC).

“The proposal is therefore contrary to paragraph 6.4.18 of Planning Policy Wales, Policy EC6 of the Wrexham Unitary Development Plan and Policy NE6 of the emerging Wrexham Local Development Plan.

“The proposal is defined as highly vulnerable development and the site lies within Flood Zone C2. As such the proposals are at an unacceptable risk of flooding and also potentially give rise to increased flooding risk off-site.”