EMPTY offices in the city centre are set to be converted into new flats despite being described as ‘cramped rabbit hutches’.

Worcester City Council’s planning committee approved an application to turn the upper floors of the listed Victoria House in Foregate Street into 14 new flats at a meeting on Thursday (July 28).

The plan was criticised by former planning chair Cllr Alan Amos who criticised the council for “going down the wrong road” and allowing developers to “plaster the city centre with rabbit hutches with no amenities.”

“Every time we have a vacant property in the city centre which may have been offices or former shops, we’re going to have an application for residential,” he said during the planning meeting in the Guildhall.

“We need to face this issue, head on, now. This will be used as a precedent for future ones because if this is acceptable then all the others will be.”

“The size of these apartments are tiny. We have now got 23 bedrooms in total so that could be a total of 46 people. If some of them have children as they may well do, there’s no amenity space. It’s an issue… This development and all the future ones like it are not sustainable.”

“We are going to destroy the city if we keep going on like this,” he added.

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Cllr Jenny Barnes said she was “disappointed” to see work had already started on converting the flats before the committee had made a decision and criticised the lack of outdoor space for future tenants.

Cllr Marjory Bisset said converting former office space into housing was a “good move” but the apartments looked “dreadfully cramped.”

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Andrew Thompson, the council’s interim head of development manager, said all of the apartments met space standards and councils were being encouraged by the government to convert vacant office space into apartments.

Planning chair Cllr Chris Mitchell said the committee needed to be “cognisant” of young people having “different needs, requirements and expectations” suggesting that many 18-year-olds would want to live opposite pubs, a supermarket and a train station.