This run-down pub on Verulam Road is being converted to a ‘premium wine bar’. Repainting the front has resulted in a visual improvement and, judged by this, the development might be thought of as enhancing the local environment. So why is APRA (along with the Aboyne and Verulam Road RA’s) officially objecting to it? Please read on, and click on the photos below.

1. Successive plans for the building (there have been no less than 15 applications registered with SADC since last June) have resulted in continuous enlargement, doubling the client service area. SADC has already refused one version as too large and out of keeping with the original building.

2. It has been built anyway. Without regard to planning process, local objections and an Enforcement Notice served for removal of part of the extension, it is advertised as ‘opening soon’.

3. The doubled capacity clearly puts additional strain the local residential area from noise, traffic and car parking, especially at night if drinking is allowed outside until 11 pm and inside until 1 am.

4. The design has successively encroached into the old pub garden at the rear and now has large opening doors facing 12 terrace houses in College Street, which as listed buildings are not normally allowed double glazing for sound suppression (and nor should such recourse be necessitated by the actions of another neighbour over the garden wall).

5. The previous grassed pub garden is being fully paved. This will exacerbate the noise problem and seems contrary to Environment Agency guidance – no assessment has been published concerning flood risk.

If developers build whatever they like, regardless of planning regulations, and are allowed to get away with it by cumbersome, tardy and ineffective control, then we might as well abandon the idea of a St Albans Conservation Area entirely.

The current round of planning applications is open but begins to close on 9th June. Individuals’ comments may be made on SADC website. Go to Planning and Building, Advanced Search and enter *Spotted Bull* as the Site Location. The new applications are on the second page.

SADC Planning and Building Control have just (21 March) refused plans for a large rear extension to the public house at 43-45 Verulam Road, to which many of our members had objected.

BUT the owner has continued building during the lengthy review procedure (see Herts Advertiser, 20 March and our reply jointly with our neighbouring Residents Associations, published on 10 April), and the extension is now virtually complete (and even larger than shown in the refused plans!). The refusal is largely based on over-development of the original building – objection to noise and visual intrusion to neighbours was essentially dismissed.

We shall continue to press SADC to ensure that this intrusive extension doesn’t creep in by the back door.

Application for mechanical car park withdrawn

As a residents association we were too late on the scene to affect the outcome of the application to convert the old Nationwide office block at 20 Lower Dagnall Street into 14 flats, which was approved in July 2013 despite objections from individual residents.

Under the Government’s relaxation of planning laws for such conversions, the Council itself had very limited grounds for refusing the application (which it had done on three previous occasions).

Conversion is now proceeding: many of us are content to see the building brought back into use, but feel that too much is being squeezed into a difficult site, especially with regard to overcrowding and car parking.

On the other hand, we organised objections to the installation of a mechanically operated double-stacking car park at the rear, which would have had major deleterious impact both on the lives of neighbouring residents and on future developments in our Conservation Area. The application was withdrawn in January, and we shall be vigilant in watching for any such plan in future.