West Midlands B&B plans refused amid parking ‘nightmare’

Plans for a bed and breakfast in a Birmingham suburb have been refused after failing to win over councillors a second time.

A planning application for a site at The Green in Kings Norton was seeking permission for a change of use to a nine-room ‘B&B facility’ with a café.

Proposals were put forward to make a number of ‘internal alterations’ to create additional bedrooms while the rest of the ground floor would have remained part of the existing café – Molly’s Café.

But the B&B plans have proved divisive, with Birmingham Northfield MP Laurence Turner previously saying he was worried about the possible impact on parking in the area.

Such fears were echoed during a planning committee meeting last month, with Cllr Duncan Ali (Green, Balsall Heath West) arguing that the area around The Green suffers from “parking chaos quite regularly”.

The committee voted to refuse the proposals at the time amid factors such as “impact on residential amenity for the future occupiers” and “highways concerns”.

A council officer later attempted to address the issues in a recently-published update and argued there were “no material considerations that would suggest refusing the application”.

Parking concerns still persisted at a meeting this week however, with former Kings Norton North councillor Carmel Corrigan saying: “Local residents, including me, are perplexed as to how the number of required parking spaces was calculated as five.

“Approving this application will make an already challenging situation worse.”

Cllr Ali also said on Thursday that it was an “absolute nightmare” currently to park on The Green.

But the chair of the planning committee, Cllr Martin Brooks, argued that council officers were not able to “sustain an argument” for the suggested grounds for refusal identified at the last meeting.

The committee ultimately voted to refuse the proposals again however following a vote among the councillors.

The official reason for refusal was given as: “The proposed use would provide insufficient levels of parking that would lead to an unacceptable impact on highway safety.”

‘No identifiable reasons for refusal’

Prior to the meeting, a council officer said that national policies state that development “should only be refused on highways grounds if the adverse impact on the transport network would be severe”.

“Given the low number of trips and vehicles associated with the proposed use, in the context of existing parking provision, it is not considered that the proposal meets this threshold of severe impact,” they argued.

They added that even if parking demand is displaced onto the street, customers are “unlikely to be able to park dangerously” due to an existing Traffic Regulation Order in the area.

A previous report said the proposed use would require five spaces while four were illustrated on the submitted plans.

“Even if parking demand is displaced onto the street, customers are unlikely to park illegally due to the length of overnight parking stay,” it said. “It is noted that check-in time would be from 3pm, after which parking pressure on The Green eases with the closure of daytime businesses.

“Check out will be at 10am, ensuring any limited overlap in parking demand would be short-lived and manageable.”

This week’s meeting saw a council officer argue that wouldn’t be “severe highways network impact or highways safety issue caused by the level of parking proposed”.

Concerns over residential amenity were also previously addressed by an officer, who wrote : “It was found that as there are only limited external changes to the rear of the property, that would not be detrimental to surrounding residential properties.

“There are no identifiable reasons for refusal with regards to impact upon potential future occupier.”