Councillors have defied officer advice and backed the demolition of a Twerton warehouse to build 95 starter apartments.

A previous bid for Chivers House would have seen it replaced with 199 student flats, so councillors said the new proposals were a welcome change that will provide much-needed housing.

But others said building two blocks up to seven storeys high will impact on the setting of the World Heritage Site, overdevelop the small site and be visible from miles around.

Despite officers’ recommendation to refuse the development, Councillor Paul Crossley said: “I would like to give credit to our planning team who’ve worked so hard and well with developers to get rid of the totally unacceptable student-only scheme and replace it with a residential scheme. This site is highly sustainable, so a large number of parking spaces is not required.

“There’s a railway station five minutes away, it’s one minute from the cycle path. It’s going to include an electric charging point. There’s considerable bike storage. It’s going to provide much-needed homes.”

The original proposals included no affordable housing, but negotiations between the developer and council officers secured seventeen properties under shared ownership – a rate twelve per cent short of the authority’s policy of thirty per cent. There will be a mix of one- and two-bed apartments. Highways, urban design and conservation officers all objected to the plans.

Speaking at Wednesday’s Development Management committee meeting, Bath Preservation Trust chief executive, Caroline Kay, said the insertion of affordable housing “at the eleventh hour” should not outweigh the multiple reasons for refusal raised by officers. She warned there was a “very real risk” of cumulative harm to the setting of the World Heritage Site.

Councillor Eleanor Jackson took issue with the design and scale of the development: “What is built will have an impact for miles around. Western Riverside is on one side – when the plans for that came forward, I said it looked like Stalingrad. It’s a horrible design failure, and this is even worse.

“These buildings might look OK near the community space in Keynsham, but you’ve got to consider the whole context here.”

Councillor Jasper Becker said it’s like the “second part of 50 Shades of Grey” along the riverside. Buildings should not keep being built higher and higher, he said, and the site should instead be built out with terraces, as on the other side of the river.

Councillor Patrick Anketell-Jones said the design was a “near miss” but argued intensification “either up or down” was the only option to provide more homes for the city.

The plans only mooted 24 parking spaces, 39 shy of what B&NES Council expects, but Councillor Matthew Davies said the location is highly sustainable, and has employment and transport options “on the doorstep”. There will be secure storage for 178 bikes.

The meeting heard that the site is next to a planned cycleway, but its delivery is out of the control of the developer and is instead likely to be provided by the council.

The plans said: “By linking a new cycle route to an existing disused bridge, the proposed development will enhance a currently dilapidated area whilst re-creating a lost trace of Bath’s industrial heritage.”

The committee voted six-four in favour of delegating to permit the application.

Stephen Sumner, LDR