New plans for café with rooftop terrace near popular Northumberland beach get the green light

New plans for a café with rooftop terrace within yards of Beadnell beach have been approved.
The proposed cafe and restaurant is just yards from Beadnell beach.The proposed cafe and restaurant is just yards from Beadnell beach.
The proposed cafe and restaurant is just yards from Beadnell beach.

The application to develop a site some 100 yards from the beach, on land opposite the main car park, has been given the green light by planners at Northumberland County Council.

It is a scaled-down version of a £1m scheme which already had planning permission after Stephen Dixon of Windsor Developments ‘reconsidered the appropriateness of the previous design and evaluated the customer demand’.

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The new application is for a single storey building which, the applicant states, aims to ‘better reflect the ambition of the developers and restaurateurs to create a destination venue for this amazing location’.

The proposed cafe site.The proposed cafe site.
The proposed cafe site.

The new design features glass doors opening on to an outside space ‘that allows customers to stay casual as they come off the beach.’ The rest would mainly feature timber cladding to give it a beach cabin appearance.

The Northumberland Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) Partnership said the reduced scale application went some way towards addressing its concerns.

It stated: “Whilst this is not the visitor and water sports centre of the original concept that had numerous public benefits for Beadnell, the AONB Partnership accepts planning permission for two versions of a cafe / restaurant on this site have been permitted, and that this third iteration represents a more sensitive design of building and scale of operation.”

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There were nine objections with concerns about noise from the roof terrace, its design, lighting, lack of disabled access to the roof terrace and loss of privacy for local residents.

Beadnell Parish Council shared some of these concerns but decided not to object.

There were two letters of support.

Rachel Campbell, the council’s senior planning officer, reported: “The council’s built heritage and design officer acknowledges that the scale and massing of the restaurant/café has been reduced since the previous extant permissions and therefore it is considered the acceptability of the scale and massing of the building has already been established.

"The council’s officer considers that the proposal is in keeping with the limited low-rise development which surrounds the application site and is supportive of the contemporary design approach.”

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The application includes parking provision for 58 vehicles, including three accessible bays.

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