PLANS to convert Cirencester Active4Less into housing were approved by the district council with the gym owners keen to downsize.

Concerns over parking allocations for the proposed six flats on Dyer Street were raised by members Cotswold District Council (CDC) planning committee during the meeting on Wednesday (March 8).

Each apartment will only be given one parking space, behind the building alongside parking for Argos, which ward councillor Joe Harris called ‘mad’.

“I think we're living in cloud cuckoo land if you think that that's going to be acceptable,” he said at the meeting.

“It's the reality of the modern world. If we continue to cut public transport then unfortunately people have no other option than to go in their car,” he said.

Cllr Juliet Layton suggested the council conditions that agents Pegasus negotiate with Argos to allow occupants of the flats to park there when the shop is shut, as part of the planning consent.

However, she was told by officers for such a condition to be added the issue would have to “be on the basis that we would find the application refusable otherwise” – which Cllr Harris said was ‘frustrating’.

Cllr Patrick Coleman said: “A lot of our town centres and cities are spoiled by having too much provision for cars.

“I don't think anybody out there would expect to have two car parking spaces living in a one-bedroom flat in the middle of one of the most historic town centres in the country."

Cllr Mark Harris, mayor of Cirencester, said in ‘busy areas’ with lots of public transport, no parking spaces would be provided as the norm but said in Cirencester “you wind up with the [parking] disaster we’ve got at the moment”.

He said: “The reality is there will be two maybe three cars per unit and if the developer doesn't provide parking it means the district council or the county council has to provide parking.”

He went on to warn members that “once you get big spaces in town centres, once it's gone to residential it's gone forever”.

In a letter to case officer Claire Baker, the agents said the applicants – Parcland Ltd, who bought the building in March 1996 when it was a church, have “heavily subsidised the gym almost since it opened” in April 1998.

The applicants have, however, been helping the gym owners to find new premises “half this size” – according to the agent’s letter.

Nine members voted in favour of Ms Baker’s recommendation to approve the application.

Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard:

Cirencester Active4Less owner Simone Price with duty manager Jordan Messenger