Date: 17 November 2015
To: Caroline Maher
Development Control Division
Liverpool City Council
Municipal Buildings
Dale Street, Liverpool L2 2DH

Dear Mrs Maher,

FORMER CLEGGS FELT FACTORY SITE,
42 GATEACRE BROW, LIVERPOOL L25 3PH
Application No 15F/2296 - Unique ID 2864460

Thank you for your letter dated 15th October 2015 inviting the Gateacre Society's comments on the above planning application. At its meeting on 9th November, the Society's Executive Committee asked me to submit an objection to the application, on grounds similar to those that we put forward in 2006 in response to planning application 06F/0294.

On 21st October I emailed you to point out that the wrong Design & Access Statement had been submitted by the applicant, and on 27th October you replied: "I will therefore raise this issue with the agent and request a suitably amended DAS be submitted asap. Once this has been received, I will notify you of the revised statement". As yet I have not heard from you further, so I assume that the new DAS has not yet been submitted. I note that the advertised closing date for comments was yesterday  (16th November) which is clearly an unsatisfactory state of affairs.

In the absence of a relevant Design & Access Statement, the comments which follow are based on what we can deduce about the proposal from the submitted Application Form, Site Plan, and Elevations drawings.

1. We are very pleased with the work that has been carried out so far in respect of applications 06F/0294 and 06L/0298, i.e. the conversion and extension of the former Gateacre Brewery building. It has made this Listed Building even more of an asset to the Gateacre Village Conservation Area than it was before, when it was in use as a felt factory. We also welcome the refurbishment of the former manager's house (Listed) at 42 Gateacre Brow.

2. We have no objection to the retention of the portal-framed 'shed' alongside the Travis Perkins boundary wall, and its use as a covered car-parking area - at least until such time as the Travis Perkins site is itself redeveloped for residential purposes (which we would welcome).

3. We do object to the proposed three-storey 'Block 2' alongside the Brown Cow/St Stephen's Court boundary wall. In particular we object to its proposed height, which we believe will adversely affect the setting of the nearby listed buildings. The Brewery must have been by far the tallest building in the neighbourhood when it was first constructed, and we feel that an extension on the scale proposed would detract from its character. The new block will also have an overshadowing effect on the neighbouring properties in Halewood Road.

4. We made the above points in our 2006 objection, but planning permission was nevertheless granted for a similar (though not identical) apartment block. Having recently visited both the Brown Cow and St Stephen's Court, I discovered that most of the occupiers were unaware of the scale of the proposal - and aghast when they compared the height of the proposed apartment block with the height of the existing boundary wall (and even with the height of the already-built 'Brewery Gardens' apartment block). We feel that you should look again at the impact of the proposal on these people, as we do not believe that it was adequately considered at the time of the 2006 planning application.

Continued . . .