A prominent office building that used to be occupied by Thames Water office will be demolished to make way for new industrial units, despite initially being meant for flats.
Rose Kiln Court is a two-storey office building situated between the A33 and Rose Kiln Lane in Coley.
Once occupied by Thames Water staff, the offices were closed in October 2020 and never reopened.
That led to a development company to apply to convert it into either 38 one-bed flats or 34 flats containing a mix of one and two bedrooms.
But now Rose Kiln Court is set to be completely demolished and replaced with three new buildings for light industrial use.
The project received support when discussed at the council's planning applications committee meeting.
Councillor Richard Davies (Labour, Thames) argued that Rose Kiln Court would not be an ideal location for 34-38 flats given the amount of busy roads and businesses in close proximity to it.
Cllr Davies said: "If that had ended up being built out as residential I think that would have been a worse outcome for the future residents of that development.
"Now the fact is that it's going to be light industrial providing employment, I think that's a much more suitable use of that site."
Agreeing, cllr James Moore (Liberal Democrats, Tilehurst) said: "I think it's always sad that we've got empty buildings doing nothing on a brownfield site so I think this is really good to see, a desire to have something that's actually going to contribute to the local economy."
Cllr Moore questioned whether public transport links would be improved both through a new bus stop that is set to be established along that stretch of Rose Kiln Lane and safe pedestrian crossings.
However, planning officer Richard Eatough admitted that the planned new bus stop had not been considered during the planning department's assessment of the project.
He therefore suggested a condition be added to any permission to define sustainable transport arrangements to the site.
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Cllr Jan Gavin (Labour, Caversham), chair of the committee mentioned that Coley Labour councillors Ellie Emberson, Paul Gittings and Liz Terry were all in favour of the project.
The project was unanimously approved by the committee on Wednesday, October 2.
Permission was granted subject to a section 106 agreement defining developer contributions to the council, and the submission of an access strategy and public transport statement laying out access and travel arrangements to the site.
The project was submitted by Redwood Propco Sarl. Designs show three blocks being constructed, with 'Block A' containing three units, 'Block B' containing four units and 'Block C' providing one unit.
You can view the application by typing reference 23/0826 into the council's planning portal.
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