A PLAN to convert a former sandwich shop into a laundrette and holiday flats has been rejected by councillors.

Worcester City Council’s planning committee turned down a proposal which would have seen former sandwich shop Scoffs in Worcester’s New Street transformed into a new laundrette and short-term holiday lets over fears the rooms would be too cramped.

Concerns were also raised by councillors that the cramped rooms – which were smaller than national standards – would be used as permanent flats.

Cllr Jenny Barnes said she thought the land was being overdeveloped and the plan was “undesirable.”

“I also worry about using large machines [in the laundrette] that whirr and clank and how that it is going to affect the fabric of a very old building,” she told the city council’s planning committee at a meeting in the Guildhall on Thursday (August 25).

“I’m very concerned that this is being sold to us as one thing and then end up as something else.”

Council planning officers said some of the rooms suffered from “poor amenity” but was acceptable for use as a holiday apartment rather than a permanent flat and had recommended the plan was approved.

The plan had gone through several changes since being submitted at the end of March with the original plan to convert the building into flats shifted to short-term holiday lets.

Cllr Andy Roberts said people coming to Worcester and staying in “shoeboxes” would be their lasting image of the city.

“Is that good for the city or bad?” he said. “I reckon, on balance, it’s bad.”

“If it were in the older part of the building then I could perhaps understand but if you’re going to build something for a purpose, why would you build it not to the standard it should come up to?”

Cllr Pat Agar added: “I’m concerned about the rear flat. You would have to be a cave dweller to really want to live in that one. It’s only got skylights and it doesn’t have windows.

“Quite apart from the space concerns, I think it sorts of adds up to me to be not entirely what we want to see.”