A flat could be built above the former Just Tiles shop in Woodley, despite fears residents could be disturbed by noise from customers shopping at a new convenience store underneath it.
Wokingham Borough Council has granted permission to convert the empty unit into a Nisa store, and on Monday, February 19, they gave Tajmeet Singh permission to change the offices above the Headley Road unit into a flat.
The decision comes after the council’s licensing panel agreed that the store could sell alcohol between 6am and 11pm daily.
A neighbour, Mr S Singh, said he was worried noise from the shop would keep the people living above it awake at night.
“Having it open until 11pm usually means people have to clear up, do your stock check etc. So that will go well past 11pm,” he said. “I don’t understand how the people are supposed to sleep. There’s not really a care for their wellbeing.”
But Mr T Singh said potential residents would know they would be living above a shop before they move in.
He said: “When we do the viewing upstairs … they won’t be blindfolded. They will be choosing if this place is right or wrong.”
He added that allowing flats above shops was ‘nothing unusual’ and that it would be compulsory to have sound insulation between the shop and the flat.
The pair were speaking at Wokingham Borough Council’s licensing and appeals sub committee on February. Mr T Singh noted that the decision on the flat was up to the council’s planning department, rather than licensing.
Wokingham Borough Council planning officers said the flat can only be built once they have been provided with plans to protect residents from shop noise: “Any new business that occupies the retained commercial floor space on the ground floor has the potential to generate unreasonable noise levels which would harm the occupiers within the proposed residential unit above.
“The submitted application form states that sound insulation will be installed to mitigate noise from the downstairs units, however no details have been submitted to confirm that the intended measures would be sufficient.”
They added: “To ensure that future occupiers are not adversely affected by noise, a noise impact assessment should be carried out with any agreed mitigation measures to be implemented prior to the first occupation of the unit.”
