Expansion of 'controversial' hotel takes another step

Controversial plans for the expansion of a Shirley hotel are continuing to progress. Village Hotels got the green light for plans for a 48-bedroom extension to the 128 bed 'business-class' hotel in Shirley - including the reconfiguration of the existing car park, landscaping and associated works - in July.

It gained approval from Solihull planners at a committee meeting despite a number of Shirley residents living near the Dog Kennel Lane site objecting for various reasons including noise and lack of parking. A petition against the scheme, signed by 18 residents, was also submitted to Solihull Council.

But at the planning committee meeting Kate Roberts, from the Pegasus group - the agent for the applicant - called the scheme a “modest extension”. She explained the extension was needed for guests using the conference facilities.

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The application was given approval, subject to conditions. Now it has emerged another application was submitted to the council.

This application, submitted in October, requested minor amendments to the planning permission. Among the amendments were increasing the ground floor footprint for additional storage; location of bedroom windows being adjusted and some columns and panels to be omitted.

In the planning application submission the Pegasus group - the agent for the applicant - explains: “Since the application was submitted, and approved at committee, the applicant has instructed contractors to bring the extension forward. As part of this, minor amendments and tweaks are required.

“Lawrence Osborne, team Leader- major projects, provided some advice and confirmed the proposed amendments are ‘non-material’ and therefore can be dealt with via Section 96a (a non-material amendment application).” The application was given approval by Solihull Council’s planners on November 4.

As the Local Democracy Reporting Service previously reported another application related the scheme, to formally ‘discharge’ condition 12 (contaminated land), has also been submitted to the authority. That application is at the consultation stage until November 28.

To view that application and submit a comment for the consultation search for application PL/2024/00011/PPFL at https://publicaccess.solihull.gov.uk/online-applications.