A trust has “reservations” over plans for student housing in Durham city centre.
Plans have been lodged to convert the building above the former Smiggles shop into a six-bedroom student accommodation HMO.
In proposals lodged with Durham County Council, the ground floor retail space will be retained.
In a letter to planners, John Lowe, chairman of the City of Durham Trust, said: “The trust understands the difficulty in utilising the upper spaces of the historic retail properties.
“While it has reservations about an increase in student accommodation, alternatives would be hard to achieve.
“Retaining a retail unit at ground floor, as this application does, is essential.
“This listed building is in a sensitive location, the access to the World Heritage Site, a historic street and listed building.”
It adds: “The traditional shopfront and frontage treatment are beneficial to the historic street frontage.”
In a planning statement lodged with Durham County Council, it states: “The proposed bedroom spaces are to be created by dividing the existing front rooms with a lightweight studwork partition to create two separate spaces and a hallway on floors one, two and three.
“If in the event the future property owner wished to turn the proposed bedrooms back into one room, then this lightweight partition can be easily taken down."
The statement, by Building Design Northern on behalf of the applicant, Oliver Morgan, added: “There is great potential to improve the use of this building and the proposed works require very little changes to be made to the external appearance of the existing building.
"These changes will not be visible from the front street or side/rear vennel, therefore will have little or no effect on any neighbouring property.”
