10A Monmouth Place, City Centre, Bath
We recognise that there is an opportunity to integrate a home-work space within the city centre and revitalise what may be an underused studio/workshop space. There is an apparent disparity in the internal layout of the ground floor. As existing, the ground floor, despite being indicated to be in Class E use, is made up of a kitchen, living room, and study. Whilst a kitchenette/study workspace may be expected as part of this use class, we note that the ground floor as existing already appears to be somewhat ‘domestic’ in its layout and therefore its associated use?
We also highlight that the existing floor layout bears a strong resemblance to the proposed ground floor layout as part of withdrawn application 02/01797/FUL, such as the blocking up of the doorway between the central room and the study, and creation of a new opening between the kitchen and living room. The WC located just off the kitchen does not appear to benefit from any associated planning permission/listed building consent. We therefore note that there may have been a number of unauthorised works to a listed building, which we trust will be regulated by the case officer as part of the planning application assessment.
The front room would be retained as a commercial space, although there appears to be a slight conflict with the balance between commercial use and ancillary residential use (eg. bike and bin storage). We have some concerns regarding the proposed standard of living accommodation on the ground floor and whether this would provide an adequate level of usable amenity space for future occupiers and suggest that proposed floor space measurements are provided as part of the application. We query whether the studio floorspace should be considered as part of this calculation where this would be retained for commercial use; however, it appears to be included within the proposed change of use to Class C3, raising the question as to how the proposed commercial space would be retained as such in future.
We therefore question whether it may be more effective to instate a split Use Class (E/C3) across the ground floor to better secure the retention of commercial floorspace along Monmouth Place.