Formal planning permission has been approved for a mixed use scheme at Midland Road in Bath for our client, Watkin Jones Group, providing the following:
- 14 studio apartments to be allocated to key workers
- 92 studio apartments allocated to students
- Separate ancillary facilities for each tenure type
The brief was initially for 100% student housing, with 115 Studio Bedrooms plus ancillary spaces submitted for planning in August 2016. This follows a series of detailed pre-application discussions with the Local Authority, BaNES, who were ultimately supportive of our scheme, characterised by a contextual yet contemporary design approach.
The site is situated directly adjacent the River Avon, just off the Upper Bristol Road and behind the Argos Superstore. Midland Road itself is currently a no-through road, however with the re-opening of the Destructor Bridge across the river, it will become an important gateway to the large Western Riverside development site on the opposite bank.
Due to the adjacency of the river we had to minimise light spill in order to maintain a ‘dark corridor’ for bats. For this reason, 50% of the rooms on the south elevation have balconies facing the river, which also helps provide an additional amenity for the students. The requirement for light spill reduction had to be balanced against a desire to maximise natural daylighting in the bedrooms.