Rejected plans for historic Bath building resubmitted
The Royal Mineral Water Hospital could become a hotel
Converting Bath's historic hospital The Min into a hotel would help the local economy recover from coronavirus.
That's what the developer hoping to carry out the work has claimed - The Fragrance Group wants to turn the grade II listed building into a 160 bed hotel but had the original idea rejected.
The revised application says it has taken a new design approach, reduced the scale and mass of the extension, addressed residential amenity issues and improved biodiversity.
The hotel would be open to non-hotel guests for the restaurant, cafe and bars and business people for meetings.
It would also be open several days a year for guided tours on the history of the building.
Fragrance Group said in its plans: “The proposals will secure the optimum viable use for the building, whilst at the same time facilitating some continued public access.
It added: “It is strongly in the public interest that the vacant building, which occupies a prominent city centre site, is brought back into beneficial use to assist the city’s post-Covid recovery plan. A prolonged period of vacancy will be damaging to the economy of Bath’s city centre.”
The NHS ran the building as the Royal National Hospital For Rheumatic Diseases until December 2019 after selling the building to Winchester-based Versant UK Ltd for £15 million.
It planned to turn the hospital into a hotel with shops on the ground floor but was unable to secure the necessary funding, so sold the site to Fragrance Group in 2018 for £21.5 million.
The Singaporean investment firm, which has bought and converted a number of listed buildings in the UK, plans to spend a further £35 million converting the building.
What happened to the previous scheme?
Originally a 167-bed hotel was proposed with a restaurant in the atrium linking the former hospital and the extension.
It was rejected after 187 objections and representations from the likes of the Bath Preservation Trust and the Federation of Bath Residents’ Associations.
Proposing refusal at the planning committee meeting last September, Councillor Sue Craig said: “I commend the applicants for the compromises to minimise the impact on the building, its setting and neighbours.
"However, I do have a problem with the size and mass of the extension.”
She argued it would be years before the habitat recovers and the Fragrance Group's use of "every inch" of land for the extension would be overbearing for Parsonage Lane residents.
Cllr Manda Rigby said the extension would make life in the neighbouring properties “almost untenable”, adding: “For some of the flats on the lower floors, you’d almost have to stick your head out the window and turn it around to see any sky whatsoever.
“That’s not something we should be in favour of. It damages the residential amenity to such an extent it’s not counterbalanced by keeping the building in public use.”
What has the developer done?
In a bid to get the plans approved, the Fragrance Group has now reduced the scale and mass of the extension and its relationship to Parsonage Lane.
They have also brought in Bath firms Aaron Evans Architect and Greenhalgh Landscape Architecture to help with the plans.
Bath and North East Somerset Council will decide the fate of the application.