A FRESH plan to build a bigger extension on an ‘ugly’ home has been put forward.

Councillors approved a plan to build an extension to add an extra room to an existing five-bed house of multiple occupation (HMO) in Martley Road earlier this year.

But landlord Bidsid has now gone back to Worcester City Council with a new plan to build an extra bedroom by adding another storey to the designs approved in August.

The council’s planning committee did give the green light to a ground-floor extension despite labelling the house of multiple occupation (HMO) “absolutely monstrous, hideous and ugly.”

Some concerns were also raised about off-street parking by neighbours in Fern Road but the county council’s highways department said the three spaces provided were in line with its requirements.

Highways officers said the new plans would need to include four parking space for them to be acceptable – but the application by Bidsid only proposes three.

The then four-bed home on the corner of Martley Road and Fern Road was converted into a five-bed HMO in 2019 before another plan to add another two bedrooms was put forward and eventually withdrawn in May this year.

Speaking at a meeting of the city council’s planning committee in the Guildhall on August 25, Cllr Owen Cleary said: “I just want to go on record to say that I think is absolutely monstrous and hideous but I’m not sure we can actually refuse it.”

Planning vice chair Cllr Pat Agar agreed saying: “I think a lot of us think it looks pretty ugly. I don’t think we can refuse it because we think it’s ugly, but it certainly is ugly.”

Despite the disdain for the design, councillors said they could not find a resign to reject the application with planning chair Cllr Chris Mitchell begrudgingly admitting it was ‘probably an improvement.’

“I would love to find loads of reasons to object to an HMO but in this instance, if anyone remembers what that property looked like three or four years ago before it was developed, it was in an awful condition,” Cllr Mitchell said.

“There were some objections then from residents but they seem to have been minimised now.”