Shopfront cuts no ice with council

Framed in corporate red aluminium, and flush with the front of the three-storey, early 20th century building in Devonshire Road where it occupies a former Woolworth’s store, the shop’s facia was put in without planning permission last year.

Yesterday Rother District Council’s planning committee backed officers’ views that it is “not in keeping with Bexhill’s traditional shopfronts” and “fundamentally out of character with the conservation area”, and ordered enforcement action to have it removed.

Asymmetrical glazing that relates poorly to the upper storeys, and a roller shutter that “obscures half the shopfront and has a deadening effect on the shopping street”, were among reasons for Rother refusing retrospective planning permission in May last year.

When Iceland appealed, a planning inspector upheld the council’s views that the facia was inappropriate and on February 2 this year dismissed the appeal. Now the council wants the unauthorised shopfront replaced with projecting display windows either side of a wide central lobby, as previously existed.

Iceland must comply within six months or else come up with an agreed alternative before the deadline expires. Council planners hope that with enforcement action now pending, the company will return to the table with proposals that would be mutually acceptable.

An Iceland spokeswoman said: “We can confirm that we have submitted an alternative scheme which we hope will meet with the council’s requirements. We are now awaiting their response.”