Plans to convert Maidenhead office block into 40 flats refused over space concerns

The Royal Borough has refused a prior approval application to convert a former office building in Maidenhead into flats – citing concerns over space.

Thames House, in Marlow Road, was built in 1998 and was previously used as the Maidenhead headquarters for inVentiv Health, a US-based company in the biopharmaceutical industry.

Proposals to convert the office building into 40 flats were originally put forward in 2021.

The plans were subsequently approved but the conversion did not take place within the three-year timescale for the planning permission.

Residents also petitioned against plans for an additional 33 flats on top of the original 40, submitted in 2023. The extension was ultimately refused.

The building was listed for sale in May.

A new prior approval application for 40 flats was submitted in June this year.

This process allows developers to convert offices into flats without a full planning application, as long as they meet a nationally set checklist of requirements.

Application documents showed the three-storey building would have been redeveloped to include a variety of studio flats as well as one and two-bedroom flats.

Some units would also have home office rooms with a roof terrace for all residents.

As a former office, the building already offered ‘generous’ parking, as described by Copperfield Land and Planning Ltd, representing the applicant, Aberdeen Standards Investments.

The ground floor and basement has a car park for approximately 100-140 cars.

But residents living near Thames House raised privacy concerns.

One resident said the flats would ‘create continuous overlooking and result in a complete loss of privacy’.

Others were also worried about noise and disruption.

One resident objected because he believed the proposals would lead to an ‘over-intensification of the site’ in an already overly developed part of Maidenhead.

There is a great pressure on the Royal Borough to approve planning applications in order to reach its housing target.

But objectors said ‘there is a need for more family homes’ to create balance.

Future residents would have accessed the flats via Sun Lane, which further raised questions from others in neighbouring buildings.

They described Sun Lane as a ‘narrow’ and ‘small road’ with the additional traffic likely to become a hazard for cars and pedestrians.

The council refused the prior approval application because the plans did not meet nationally described space standards – one of the checklist requirements of the prior approval process.

The design and access statement said that ‘each apartment is designed to meet or in most cases exceed national space standards.’

The flats would have ranged from 47sqm to 103sqm.

But a planning officer who visited the site disagreed with this assessment.

They looked at the floor plans and noted double beds would be put in all the units, meaning some of the flats could potentially house more people than suggested in the proposals.

The officer said: “All two-bedroom units have been taken as two-bed, four-person units [for the purposes of the assessment].

“Based on the submitted plans, a number of the proposed flats would fail to accord with the requirements of the Nationally Described Space Standards (NDSS).”

The prior approval application was subsequently refused.