Plans for homes on former council office site rejected

Plans for three new houses on the site of a former Dudley Council housing office have been thrown out.

The scheme, on the corner of Brewery Road and Watson’s Green Road in Dudley, for three-bedroom homes included two semi-detached dwellings and a detached house.

In a report for planners, council officers recommended refusal, they said: “The proposed dwellings would not conform to good urban design principles.”

Planners agreed and concluded the buildings would be ‘overbearing, awkward and unsympathetic to the street scene of Watsons Green Road’.

Planners have also rejected a proposal to convert a large single house in Wollaston into three separate homes, two with two bedrooms and one three-bedroom home.

The existing property, called Oakwood, on High Park Avenue is a substantial four-bedroom house. The application included a request to extend the front of the property and divide the garden at the rear into three new, separate amenity areas.

The application attracted eight objections including concerns about a change in the character of the street scene, loss of privacy and highway safety.

Planners refused the application after concluding the alterations would have an adverse impact on the character of the original building and the subdivision of the property would result in amenity spaces that were out of character with the area.

Planners have finally approved the demolition of an empty pub in Brierley Hill to be replaced by a retail unit.

Applications to replace The Brockmoor House on High Street with a shop had twice been rejected after concerns about the visual impact of the new building, limited parking and access for delivery vehicles which included trucks straying onto the wrong side of the road when leaving the site.

The latest plans have been amended to relocate the building on the site and create 17 parking spaces instead of 13 on previous designs. The new layout also means trucks can operate without any highway safety problems.