Royal Beach Hotel in Southsea to be converted into flats as planning permission is granted

A decision notice for the scheme, proposed by developer Farid Yeganeh, was issued by Portsmouth City Council on Thursday, December 29, following the decision of its planning committee to approve the plans in November.

The application – the third proposed for the east wing of the Southsea hotel – will allow the conversion of the building into 29 flats in a project council planning officers said was a ‘significant’ improvement over previous iterations.

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Committee member and council leader Gerald Vernon-Jackson described it as ‘an example of where the planning committee has worked really well’.

‘We had a proposal that came to us before where there were flats significantly below the space standards,’ he said. ‘We were advised that we should not pursue that and that it would be unwise to put a condition on. We ignored that advice and the developer has come back with something that is much better.’

Councillor Judith Smyth, the committee’s chairwoman at the time, said the new proposal was better designed, describing the previous scheme as a ‘warren’ with flats ‘crammed in’.

Planning permission was previously granted for a 40-flat scheme but this was abandoned by the developer during the pandemic because it would not meet post-Grenfell changes to building regulations.

‘We looked at the space we had and decided the building lent itself to have fewer, but slightly bigger units, so we asked our architects to create an alternative set of drawings for us to consider which was the better option,’ Mr Yeganeh said following the submission of the new design.

‘Having received the plans, the new scheme we felt was not only better for the building but also more in keeping with its seafront location.’

Last February, the hotel was repurposed to help refugees, turning over all its rooms to them as part of a government contract. It said there would be a six-month contract from the Home Office that would see all 74 rooms occupied.

A requirement of the planning permission is that works starts within three years.