A controversial move to convert a home into flats has been approved by councillors despite concerns about parking.

The plan to convert the former six-bed home in Bromwich Lane in St John’s, which had been unlawfully divided into a two-bed and a four-bed flat, into three one-bed flats was backed by Worcester City Council’s planning committee.

Bedwardine city councillors Sue Smith and Alan Amos both had concerns about the decision to allow the work without including any car parking spaces.

Highways officers raised no objection to the plan saying its “sustainable location” meant it did not need any space for cars.

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Cllr Sue Smith said Bromwich Lane and nearby Bromyard Road and St John’s were covered with double yellow lines which already made parking difficult.

“People are going to be driving round and round and end up parking in very narrow residential streets which are already congested,” she said at the planning meeting in the Guildhall on October 19.

“There isn’t room for the people who live there to park.”

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Cllr Alan Amos said there was “no evidence at all” that suggested anyone living in the building would not own a car – and it would only add to congestion and parking problems in St John’s.

The three proposed flats would each measure 46 square metres – higher than the minimum national standard of 39 square metres for a one-bed, one-person flat.

A previous plan by the developer MMFB Properties to turn the building into a six-bed house of multiple occupation (HMO) was thrown out by Worcester City Council’s planning committee last year for including “tiny” and “inappropriate” rooms.

The plan to reconfigure the building into four one-bed flats and one two-bed flat returned in January but was reduced again following talks with the council over concerns the rooms would still be too small.

Cllr Alan Amos said the plan was “totally inappropriate” and the council should not be ‘encouraging such nonsense’ – likening the small seven-and-a-half square metre and nine square metre rooms to “rabbit hutches.”

Cllr Owen Cleary was equally as dismissive of the plan saying the proposed rooms barely surpassed the size of a single-person prison cell and Cllr Pat Agar compared the “boxrooms” to tiny flats in crowded Tokyo.