Verdict on bid to turn Gateshead hotel with Angel of the North views into residential Jewish college
Plans to convert a Gateshead hotel with views of the Angel of the North into a Jewish religious college have been rejected by councillors.
Gateshead Council’s planning threw out the application on the grounds of potentially increased disturbance and the standards of some of the proposed accommodation.
Proposals to repurpose the Angel View Inn, in Low Eighton, into a Yeshiva were turned down this afternoon after councillors sided with internal reports arguing against the project. The application sought permission to use the hotel as a residential religious college for between 50-60 young men aged between 18-21, alongside seven members of staff.
The plans garnered 98 supporting comments on the council’s online portal, ranging from claims that the Yeshiva would be a place of “quiet scholarship” to the plans needing the neds of the community. However, 56 letters of objection were also logged, ranging from complaints of a loss of a community facility, to the prospect of increased noise and disturbance.
Speakers on behalf of the application, including Rabbi Leon Steinhaus, disputed that a Yeshiva would be a source of noise or disruption as compared to an operational hotel. However, councillors sided with the local authority officers’ report on the application which called for its refusal.
The report states: “The proposed change of use would have an unacceptable adverse impact on the amenity of occupiers of surrounding properties by virtue of increased noise disturbance as a result of an intensification of the use of the site that would be persistent and disruptive to adjoining and nearby residents. ”
In addition, planning officers stated some rooms on the South West of the building had insufficient natural light reaching them. The report found: the proposed living conditions, in terms of outlook and provision of natural light to a number of habitable rooms, would be unacceptable.”