Mr R. Forbes representing Bibulous Delights Ltd, the company behind the Smoke Stack Bistro, has applied for listed building consent to replace existing windows with original stone pillars and new sliding doors at 53–5 Broughton Street (Ref. 11/00606/LBC).
Proposed rearrangements to plasterboard partitions at ground-floor level would help the restaurant increase its number of covers from 58 to 74.
Smoke Stack won permission for a major internal refit of the Category B-listed building in February 2010, but did not secure clearance in autumn 2009 for an earlier sliding-door proposal which would have involved removal of a stone column (Ref. 09/02420/LBC).
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[img_assist|nid=1618|title=|desc=|link=node|align=right|width=640|height=561]Drummond Place proprietors seek listed building consent to add steel railheads to the north and south gates of the garden and to sections of railing approx 1.5m to both sides of either gate (Ref. 11/00720/LBC).
In a letter of 3 March 2011, W.M. Giles of the Drummond Place Garden Management Committee explains how two-fifths of the cast-iron garden railings were removed during the Second World War, and later replaced in the 1960s by steel railings. Being flat-topped, these are easily and frequently scaled, resulting in the need for periodic and expensive realignment (£496 for one gate in August last year).
The new plans entail extending the railings upwards above the top bar, the tips tapering to a rounded point. Replacing the modern steel railings with cast iron ones to match the originals would be prohibitively expensive. 'What we propose would, in our view, be effective, affordable, and not unattractive,' says Mr Giles.
'It is perhaps worth adding,' he adds, 'that this proposal is aimed only at protecting the gates against abuse. Although we do have a problem with vandalism by unauthorised intruders, they will still have some 250 metres of flat-topped railings to climb over!'
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In last week's coverage of a new dwelling mews in Cumberland Street Lane West (Breaking news, 14.3.11), we perhaps let early spring sunshine go to our heads and commented on the lack of objections as a rare outbreak of Planning harmony in the New Town.
A reader has now burst our balloon.
We are 'happy' to report that in fact the Great King Street Association gave what it thought was a reasoned objection to the development as did at least one other individual. The Association's submission was regarded by the Council as a 'material' comment.