AN application to create five homes on the site of the former McColls shop and post office in Portland Road, Wyke Regis has been rejected.

The business closed in August after finding itself losing trade once the new Tesco convenience store opened nearby. McColls exercised a break clause in its contract and handed the lease back to the site owners five years early.

Owners, Acme Property, has since decided that another shop was unlikely to be profitable and asked Dorset Council for permission to convert the shop and existing flats into two homes, with another three homes to the rear of the site, fronting Williams Avenue.

Ward councillor Kate Wheller told the area planning committee that to have five homes on the site was an over-development and had come at the wrong time, with the council highways team currently trying to sort out traffic problems in the area.

Weymouth town council’s planning committee had decided, by a majority decision, not to object to the proposed changes, welcoming new housing on a brownfield site, although it had expressed concerns about the possible loss of a post box in the road outside.

Agent for the property company, David Nightingale, said the application would see extra homes created and improve the look of a ‘tired’ site. He said it complied with all the council’s policies.

But Cllr Wheller said that five homes was too many: “It’s motivated by profit, no more than that,” she told the committee, “This is proposing family homes with gardens which will have a space which is totally inadequate.”

She said that to add an extra three homes to the area at a time when the council was looking at road safety in the area was questionable. Dorset Highways had offered no objection to the proposals, but had said it was ‘disappointed’ there was no allocated parking for the five homes.

Seventeen letters of objection had been received by the council on grounds of parking, the size of the homes and that building works would prevent access to the bus stop outside the building.

Planning officers had recommended agreeing the proposals saying: “The proposed development, by reason of its design, size, positioning and materials, would successfully integrate into the surrounding environment and… would result in satisfactory living conditions of future occupiers and there would be no harmful impact on neighbours amenity.”