A plan to replace car sales suites and garages along the roadside in Tilehurst with more than 30 new flats has been refused.
The development company Maxika Homes had applied to demolish the former Marshall and Charters garages along Oxford Road and replace them with four buildings containing a total of 32 flats.
The garages were previously occupied by a Peugeot dealer and the Charters dealership, which sold SsangYong cars from around 2018 until both businesses were closed in the last year.
The site is next to the former Roebuck Hotel, which was converted into 11 flats in the late 2000s, and 1030-1040 Oxford Road, a terrace of six homes completed in 2017 situated near the Reading Borough boundary with West Berkshire.
Maxika Homes was seeking to provide the flats in four three-storey apartment blocks, with 10 of these being designated affordable in its application to Reading Borough Council.
Of the homes that would have been provided, 20 would have been two-bed flats, eight one-bed and four three-bed flats.
The future occupants would share a car park with 10 regular spaces and two disabled spaces.
However, the project was refused according to the council’s planning portal on Monday, February 18.
You can view the refused application by typing reference PL/24/1500 into the council’s planning portal.
Maxika Homes is the developer that won permission from a government-appointed planning inspector to replace the Reading Driving Test Centre in Elgar Road South, Katesgrove with 16 flats in April last year.
