A BLOCK of affordable flats by Swansea’s River Tawe will be home to around 300 people after the council’s planning committee unanimously approved the development.
The four to six-storey building in Kings Road, SA1, will comprise 104 one, two and three-bedroom flats and be managed by social housing provider Coastal Housing Group. Also included are 93 basement parking spaces, bike parking, and a ground floor cafe facing towards the Ice House.
The land has remained vacant as commercial, office, university and housing schemes have transformed the former docks area. Previous plans for 91 flats at the site were approved in 2006 but the project, apart from some piling work, was cut short by the global financial crisis.
The 104-flat scheme already had outline approval, despite concerns about the number of parking spaces being offered, when it was discussed again by the planning committee, where matters such as layout, scale and landscaping were considered.
Ground floor flats will have private terraces enclosed in the courtyards while flats above will have balconies. The whole ground floor will be raised above surrounding ground levels to mitigate flood risk.
A report before the committee, which recommended approval, said new greenery proposed within the development would be an improvement on what was currently there. A planning officer said the building would be energy-efficient and that some rooftop solar panels were included.
Cllr Peter Black said it was becoming harder to exit from Kings Road onto Quay Parade as more developments were built in SA1, and asked if the council had any plans to alter this left turn-only junction.
A highways officer said there was some money available to “eke some more capacity” from the Kings Road-Quay Parade junction, which could involve installing a traffic light. Police, he said, had opposed the junction when it was first created.
The highways officer said: “People who regularly use it (the junction) are understandably against closing it completely, so I think the obvious option is to ‘signalise’ it.”
