Plan to build seven two-bedroom flats on Wharncliffe Road in Highcliffe
Plans to demolish a clifftop house for a seven-home apartment block have been unveiled amid claims flats in the area are in increasing demand.
Lymington-based Hurst & Hurst Estates wants to demolish a two-storey detached home in Highcliffe’s Wharncliffe Road and replace it with a three-storey building comprising seven two-bed flats along with nine car parking spaces and a cycle store.
It comes months after an application to build a block of 23 flats in the same road at number 31-33 caused outrage among residents who branded it “wholly unacceptable” and “ugly and oversized”.
The new proposal for number 30 is on a much smaller scale. Hector Hurst, managing director of Hurst and Hurst Estates said: “We have spent about a year designing the the apartment block and a lot of consideration has gone into it.
“We know the road very well and have already developed two blocks west of this one so we are very aware of what fits in along there.”
In a design and access statement on behalf of the developers, Chapman Lily Planning says there are already several “similar” apartment blocks in the road.
The company says that when a 2015 planning policy covering the Christchurch and Highcliffe areas was published, it claimed that there was only a 20% need for flats.
But it added that because a similar scheme for a site in the same road was recently approved, it “would be reasonable to argue that the demand for flats is now higher than the 20% figure in 2015”.
The new three-storey building would be “greater in scale” than the existing house but the elevations and roof have been “broken up” to “minimise the impact on the street scene”.
CL Planning says the block will comprise light grey/buff brickwork, bronze and timber effect cladding, with the southern elevation “largely glazed in order to capture solar gain”.
The second and third floor apartments will have a balcony coated with a bronze-effect powder-coated aluminium and all windows and doors in the building will be given the same treatment.
The statement says the flats would “make more efficient use of urban land, boost the local economy and result in social benefits through adding new members to the local community”.
