\n Sandwell Council has rejected an application to convert the shop in Hagley Road, Smethwick, on the border of the Black Country and Birmingham, into a house of multiple occupation (HMO) for up to 14 people.\n<\/p>\n
\n The local authority\u2019s planners threw out the plans by WeStruct Consulting Engineers saying the proposed living space in the building would be \u201cinadequate\u201d and shared areas were \u201csubstandard.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n A report outlining the objection said: \u201cAs twin occupancy rooms, the internal space of each room would be cramped with no adequate living area to compensate, especially considering the maximum occupancy for the HMO could be as high as 14 people.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt would be unlikely that two people could comfortably eat meals in the bedrooms and there is insufficient space for quality leisure and mealtimes in the proposed communal area.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe internal space is unnecessarily over intensive and unacceptable in respect of design policy.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n The plans had also faced criticism for \u2018splitting up\u2019 the rows of shops in Hagley Road and for the potential to add to parking troubles.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n However, the council did not object to the plans over the shortfall in parking given the existing shortage.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe proposals would involve the loss of a ground floor retail unit which currently forms part of a continuous parade of ground floor retail and commercial units along the busy Hagley Road,\u201d the council\u2019s report continued.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe proposals involve changes to the front elevation to facilitate the residential use which would visibly break up the continuous parade of retail frontages and be detrimental to the visual appearance and character of the parade and the retail function of the town centre\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe internal arrangement proposes inadequate living space and shared areas for occupants which would result in a substandard living environment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sandwell Council has rejected an application to convert the shop in Hagley Road, Smethwick, on the border of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-557971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}