Lochgilphead house plan is thrown out

Plans for a new house to be built in Lochgilphead town centre have been thrown out by council chiefs.

The proposals for the three-bedroom building on land at the rear of 57 Argyll Street were refused by Argyll and Bute Council’s planning department.

Three complaints had been submitted to the authority, which deemed the application by John MacVicar unsuitable due to the size of the site.

John Peace Associates, representing Mr MacVicar, had previously said in a design and access statement that the proposed house would preserve privacy between Argyll Street houses and the Stag Park.

The council’s head of development and economic growth, Fergus Murray, said in a report on the handling of the application: ‘By reason of the limited size of the application site in combination with the development pattern in the immediate locality and the scale and siting of the proposed three-bedroom house, [the planned house] would result in an over-intensive form of backland development.

‘[This would be] with an unsatisfactory relationship with adjoining development to the detriment of the visual amenities of the locality and the residential amenities, [and] the occupiers of existing adjoining development in terms of loss of privacy, visual dominance and intensification of activity, noise and disturbance.

‘The proposed intensification of built development within an historic plot layout and the insensitively sited and over-intensive development of a traditional back court open space which forms part of the setting of frontage development, would be out of keeping with the traditional pattern of built development.

‘[It would also be] to the detriment of the character and appearance of the Lochgilphead Conservation Area.’

The planning and access statement said that the proposed house would only be visible to neighbouring properties.