A NEW apartment block will be built on a curry house car park after plans were backed by the council. 

The nine flats will be built on a patch of land on the corner of Neptune Street and Sedgley Road West in Tipton after the application by Gurdeep Sahota was approved by planners at Sandwell Council.

The council had approved a plan to build six flats on the land in 2022. 

The plans were redrawn to include 11 parking spaces – two more than originally included – at the request of the council. 

The land was last used as a car park for diners at the adjacent Mughal Massala restaurant.

The approval from the council for six one-bed flats came after it criticised a previous plan for six two-bed flats.

The council eventually went on to reject the two-bed flats saying the building was too big and would be ‘squeezed’ onto the land.

The council also said the apartment block would be “out of keeping” for the area and would result in its neighbours losing light and their privacy.

Rejecting the first plan in 2021, the council’s planners said: “The proposal is overdevelopment, out of keeping in terms of its scale and the proposal contravenes the council’s adopted separation distances of 15.5 metres resulting in a potential for loss of light, outlook and privacy for the existing properties on Neptune Street.”

However, when new plans that reduced the size of the flats were put forward a year later, the council approved the application and welcomed the reduction in size.

The concreted car park was long touted as a site for a large family home with plans approved by Sandwell Council as far back as 2008. 

Planning permission was renewed in 2011 – just before it was due to expire – and new designs and minor changes were approved in 2012 but the work was never carried out.