A developer narrowly avoided having to re-build the front of a Spalding shop after planners were split on whether to keep already carried out alterations.
The currently unused shop on 24 Winsover Road has been subject to works including the demolishing of a bay window and the door moved more centrally.
Mr N Mohammed carried out the works without planning permission and had to submit a retrospective application to keep them.
South Holland District Council’s Planning Committee was split on the vote, leaving its chair Coun James Avery to deliver a casting vote in the application’s favour.
That’s despite Coun Allan Beale saying he’d ‘love’ for the committee to ‘teach them (the developer) and other people a lesson’.
He called the shop front ‘horrible’ while Coun Henry Bingham branded the work ‘shoddy’.
“Although the shop front previously wasn’t the most attractive there’s been a poor replacement” said Coun Bingham. “Seeing as we’re trying to improve the town, if this came before us asking to replace, I think we’d be looking at a refusal.
“If they were prettier shops, perhaps they would attract a better clientèle.”
Councillors struggled to say anything positive about the application but they acknowledged the development is outside both the Spalding Conservation Area and designated town centre and shops around it were a ‘mish mash’.
Five councillors voted for the proposal and five were against, with one abstaining.
That meant it came down to the casting vote of Coun Avery who passed it.
“Winsover Road is not the most salubrious part of Spalding,” he said. “If we looked at it and it didn’t have the black plastic I think we wouldn’t think it was as bad.
“There are shop fronts there that are a lot worse than this.”
