A PLAN to build two homes in the back garden of a congested residential area was rejected for not providing enough car parking spaces.

Residents and councillors spoke out against a plan to convert an old outbuilding into two small homes in Sebright Avenue in Worcester after the county council’s highways departments said it should be refused for not even providing any new car parking spaces in the already crowded and congested street.

Worcester City Council’s planning committee refused the plan two weeks ago but, as it went against the recommendation of planning officers, councillors are compelled to give the plan a second chance but again voted to refuse it.

Cllr Jo Hodges and Cllr Chris Cawthorne both took exception to a letter submitted straight after the planning committee’s rejection two weeks ago which they saw as a thinly veiled threat to cause further disruption by continuing to use the workshop as a fall-back plan rather than allowing the homes.

Cllr Cawthorne said she was not as concerned by what the buildings were used for as she was the narrowness of the drive and lack of parking.

“Realistically only one car can park there and that will impede access to everybody and the likely outcome is going to be further congestion in the road,” she told councillors at a planning meeting on Thursday (July 9). “As far as I am concerned, my objection remains.”

Cllr Alan Amos said the plan had not changed in two weeks and he would continue to vote against it.

“Nobody in their right mind would try to do anything commercially on that premises when there is already no parking there,” he said.

“For them to say [the workshop] was used as recently as September 2019 I find extraordinary.”

Several neighbours in Sebright Avenue, Camp Hill Avenue and London Road had objected to the plan saying allowing the work to go ahead would also invade their privacy. The currently empty two-storey outbuilding in the garden of a home in Sebright Avenue, which was previously used as a timber workshop and storage, would have been converted into one two-bed and another one-bed home.

City council planning officers had recommended the plan should be approved when the councillors met despite highways colleagues at Worcestershire County Council saying it should be refused because it does not propose to provide any extra parking other than two spaces on the existing driveway.