A plan to convert a listed building into flats has been approved despite most of the rooms not meeting space standards.

The listed building in Foregate Street, which was home to offices but has been empty for a number of years, will be converted into a new venue and nine flats under revised plans by Nick Carroll.

Worcester City Council approved a plan to turn the same offices into 13 flats as part of plans by Nick Carroll-led developer Foregate Regeneration in March – but a new application was then put forward reducing the number of flats.

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Just two of the nine flats would meet the minimum 39 square metres to meet national standards.

The committee was split over the move with planning vice chair Cllr Pat Agar begrudgingly voting in favour of the plan – saying it was an improvement on the 13 flats approved earlier this year, but still not good enough.

“It’s a betterment that was offered before,” she said at the planning meeting on October 19. “I know I didn’t vote for what went before because I really can’t condone building rabbit hutches or requiring human beings to be in very small spaces, generally speaking.

“I know we have a lot of listed buildings and there are constraints, we do need to work with those constraints, but in general I think there are usually alternatives to putting people in very small spaces.”

The move was discussed by Worcester City Council’s planning committee at the request of joint council leader Cllr Lynn Denham over concerns that flats included in the plan were “very small with inadequate facilities.”

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Mr Carroll said that large city centre buildings, which could be converted into flats, were being left empty because of “strict” rules on space – and the flats in question were “still spacious.”

“This is a betterment,” he said. “There is a proposal that some [of the flats] still don’t comply with space standards, but they are already approved.”

“I don’t want that single quality issue to withhold accommodation from coming forward,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I don’t respect it. New accommodation, you’ve got no excuse to not provide national space standards, but older buildings that is where the stick might come.”

Ahead of the meeting, planners at Worcester City Council had recommended the application should be approved.

The council’s officers said the failure to meet space standards would be overruled by the greater need for more housing in the city – even if it was smaller than it should be.

The previous ground floor home of Thursfields Solicitors, which relocated nearby to The Tything, would be turned into a new bar.