Management Suite, 12 Southgate Street, City Centre, Bath

12 Southgate Street is an unlisted mixed-use Class E/E(d) premises within the commercial core of the Bath conservation area and World Heritage Site. It forms part of the 2009-2010 Southgate development, utilising a distinctly Georgian-esque style of architectural design. Southgate Street is a popular and busy pedestrian thoroughfare that acts as a direct connector between the historic city core and Bath Spa Station and bus station via Stall Street. The unit remains a well-connected shopfront on a busy through route for traffic and pedestrians adjacent to the entrance to the multi-storey car park, despite its perceived ‘outlier’ position on the external edge of the Southgate development. This location is instead a significant transition between Bath’s newer shopping district and the historic city centre.

As existing, there is a distinction in Southgate between the primary shopfronts and secondary door access points, generally associated with services and the upper floor residential apartments. These secondary doors are generally finished in white to ensure a cohesive finish throughout the development. We therefore recognise an anticipated need to better activate this ground floor access to the new gym at first floor level by changing the colour “to match the surrounding access doors to the public shopfronts on this frontage” (in this case a brown grey, “RAL 7013”).

However, the door as existing is twinned with the adjacent door to the Southgate management offices, in a matching design and white colour finish. A colour change therefore may offset the existing balance of these access points and as established through the wider Southgate development. It may be prudent to consider proposed treatment of the door in relation to its neighbour; as the indicated extent of the application location washes over the management office, it could be considered that a change of colour is applied across both doors.

The proposed use of a brown grey colour doesn’t appear to have a reference to neighbouring retail premises, which instead utilise a dark grey or black colour across window frames and signage (see recent consent 22/01096/AR for signage alterations at 11 Southgate Street as well as signage for the Southgate Car Park). A more closely matching colour may be more appropriate.