The Royal Mineral Water Hospital may grow to be a hotelDevelopers need to flip The Min into a 160-bed hotelAuthor: Stephen Sumner for Local Democracy Reporting Service / James DiamondPublished 1 hour agoLast up to date 1 hour in the pastConverting Bath’s historic hospital The Min into a hotel would help the local economy recover from coronavirus.That’s what the developer hoping to hold out the work has claimed – The Fragrance Group needs to show the grade II listed constructing into a 160 mattress hotel however had the authentic concept rejected.The revised software says it has taken a new design strategy, lowered the scale and mass of the extension, addressed residential amenity points and improved biodiversity. The hotel would be open to non-hotel friends for the restaurant, cafe and bars and enterprise folks for conferences.It would even be open a number of days a yr for guided excursions on the historical past of the constructing.Fragrance Group stated in its plans: “The proposals will safe the optimum viable use for the constructing, while at the similar time facilitating some continued public entry. It added: “It is strongly in the public curiosity that the vacant constructing, which occupies a outstanding metropolis centre web site, is introduced again into useful use to help the metropolis’s post-Covid restoration plan. A protracted interval of emptiness can be damaging to the economy of Bath’s metropolis centre.” The NHS ran the constructing as the Royal National Hospital For Rheumatic Diseases till December 2019 after promoting the constructing to Winchester-based Versant UK Ltd for £15 million. It deliberate to show the hospital into a hotel with outlets on the floor flooring however was unable to safe the mandatory funding, so offered the web site to Fragrance Group in 2018 for £21.5 million. The Singaporean funding agency, which has purchased and transformed a variety of listed buildings in the UK, plans to spend a additional £35 million changing the constructing.What occurred to the earlier 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 assembly final September, Councillor Sue Craig stated: “I commend the candidates for the compromises to minimise the affect on the constructing, its setting and neighbours. “However, I do have a drawback with the dimension and mass of the extension.”She argued it would be years earlier than the habitat recovers and the Fragrance Group’s use of “each inch” of land for the extension would be overbearing for Parsonage Lane residents.Cllr Manda Rigby stated the extension would make life in the neighbouring properties “virtually untenable”, including: “For a few of the flats on the decrease flooring, you’d virtually have to stay your head out the window and switch it round to see any sky in anyway.“That’s not one thing we ought to be in favour of. It damages the residential amenity to such an extent it’s not counterbalanced by preserving the constructing in public use.”What has the developer performed?In a bid to get the plans permitted, the Fragrance Group has now lowered the scale and mass of the extension and its relationship to Parsonage Lane.They have additionally introduced in Bath corporations Aaron Evans Architect and Greenhalgh Landscape Architecture to help with the plans.Bath and North East Somerset Council will determine the destiny of the software. Hear all the newest information from throughout the UK on the hour, each hour, on Greatest Hits Radio on DAB, at greatesthitsradio.co.uk, and on the Greatest Hits Radio app.
