Huge offices in Reading town centre could be converted into nearly 100 apartments

The Abbey Gardens office complex off Kings Road is made up of 31,800 square feet of space across seven floors.

The complex is in an ideal location with restaurants nearby and the train station being less than a 10-minute walk away.

Some offices of the offices benefit from views of the Abbey Ruins and the River Kennet.

The offices feature desk space, breakout areas for brainstorming and meetings and ‘plug and play’ areas where visitors can simply plug in their laptops and begin working.

But now property developers the McGrath Group have submitted a plan to convert parts of part of ground, first, second, third, fourth and fifth floors into a total of 92 apartments.

These would be made up of 84 one-bed and eight two-bed flats.

Huge offices in Reading town centre could be converted into flats

Planning documents state the development would be ‘car-free’ with the exception of three accessible disabled parking bays.

Future occupants would be able to make use of 48-cycle storage spaces.

Justifying the ‘car-free’ nature of the scheme, an agent from Marksides Associates wrote: “The bus and train services operating in proximity to the site are very regular in frequency and, therefore, sufficient to provide future residents with realistic travel alternatives to the private car, supporting a car-free development.”

The conversion plan has been submitted to Reading Borough Council as a ‘prior approval’ application.

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Since 2013, developers and site owners have had the right to convert offices and commercial space into housing under permitted development rights.

However, with larger applications such as this, the applicant requires ‘prior approval’ from the council to determine whether living standards would be acceptable for future occupants.

This particularly relates to access to daylight, limitations on noise disturbance on future occupants and minimum space standards.

The McGrath Group commissioned a noise report by KP Acoustics which states that there will be no unacceptable impacts from noise generated by nearby businesses on the future occupiers of Abbey Gardens.

Huge office building set for conversion into nearly 100 flats

An agent on behalf of McGrath Group stated that, while noise mitigation measures have been recommended, they are not strictly required.

However, the agent did concede noise mitigation measures would ‘improve the overall living environment and ensure compliance with the recommended internal noise levels for residential use’.

Furthermore, the McGrath Group has submitted more information stating that all of the proposed flats would comply with rules determining space standards, the size of rooms and floor-to-ceiling height.

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