318 room 'aparthotel' for Elm Road, Wembley Central at Brent Planning Committee tonight

 

Euro Hotel, Elm Road, Wembley Central

Proposed Aparthotel (I don't remember Elm Road being that wide!)

No it's not!

Apart from the Wembley Edge planning application already descibed on Wembley Matters (LINK) another large development proposal that has been around for a while comes to Planning Committee tonight.

This is for the development of the site of the Euro Hotel (previously Elm Hotel) on Elm Road in Wembley Central and the adjoining Spiritualist Church in St Johns Road.

They would be replaced by an Aparthotel covering 10,090 square metres as against the current 1,258 square metres. 

The proposal:

Demolition of existing hotel building and community centre [church?] and erection of a part 6, part 8 and part 10 storey 318 room aparthotel plus basement accommodation with associated ancillary facilities, community floorspace (Use Class F1/F2),servicing, landscaping and cycle and refuse storage.

So what is an Aparthotel. Officers provide the answer:

Apart-hotels are defined within the London Plan as self-contained accommodation (within Use Class C1), providing for short-term occupancy, with a concierge and room service. the length of stay would be limited to a maximum of 90 days per occupant, and a planning condition would secure that residencies at the hotel accommodation of 90 days or more are to be prevented, to ensure that the use of the hotel accommodation would meet the needs identified within the London Plan and Brent Local Plan for visitor accommodation.

 

Each room would have a double bed, with storage, a shower and toilet en-suite and a kitchenette facility. Inclusive access has been confirmed as integral to the design of the hotel. It has been confirmed that10% (16) of the hotel rooms would be accessible in accordance with London Plan policy E10.

Brent received a 33 person petition in favour of the development which appears to include local businesses and 14 objections.

The impact on neighbouring two storey homes in St Johns Road and Elm Road is considerable and unsurprisingly most of the objections come from them:

 From a legal view point, my main objections are:

1) that the location of this planning proposal does NOT fall under the "Tall Building Zone". This is a residential zone and height restrictions should be observed.

2) I have it on good authority that the hotel group own many proprieties around the area of the existing hotel (I believe they own nearly all the houses on Elms Road, many of the houses on St Johns Road going north right up to the bridge and they also own houses on Acacia Avenue). Consultations have been sent by post to all these properties and there needs to be due diligence in identifying who owns the property when the consultations are returned. I strongly believe that the hotel should only be allowed to vote once.

From a personal view point, my objections are:

The planned building development would block out all light, many houses on St Johns Road would be in the shade all year round, with no sunlight ever hitting the windows or paving; this means it will be mostly wet underfoot - even worse with snow and ice which would stay longer than normal.

Parking would be harder for residents, especially on event days: Hotel coaches would take up 3 or 4 parking spaces and would only need 1 permit per day to stay. The plans show that two resident parking bays would be removed and there is already a shortage of spaces. Please note that on St Johns Road, none of the houses on the west side of the road (right up to bridge) have off-street parking.

I would also add there would be major TV disruption for anyone who uses freeview and has a freeview aerial on their roof, as any house north of the proposed development will have their aerials pointing in exactly that direction. TV channels (especially HD) would be limited, or worse still, freeview may not work at all.

For all the reasons listed above, I strongly object.

View from St Johns Road towards the High Road.

 

Officers comment on the loss of the Spiritualist Church:

The redevelopment of the site would involve the loss of the existing Spiritualist Church. A schedule of areas submitted with the application indicates that the existing church building has a total GIA of 145sqm. The application proposes the reprovision of 220sqm of flexible F1/F2 community space over ground and basement floor level, indicating that the social infrastructure space would be fully re- provided.

They conclude regarding the whole application:

The aparthotel proposed with an ancillary flexible F1/F2 space is considered to make efficient use of the land, which would regenerate the site which would provide a positive contribution to the emerging streetscene and the positive employment and economic benefits associated with the hotel.

 

The building is considered to have an appropriate scale and massing of proposed buildings would relate well to the existing and future site context. As the report acknowledges, there is expected to be some impacts on existing daylight and sunlight light conditions to existing residential dwellinghouses nearby.

 

The impacts would be commensurate with development of this form and such impacts must be balanced against the planning benefits of the proposal. Overall, and on balance, the impacts associated with the development would it is considered be outweighed in this case by the benefits of redeveloping the site, economic benefits and public realm improvements.

 

The Planning Commitee begins at 6pm tonight and  can be viewed HERE