The owners of the White Elephant pub at 128 Merrylee Road proposed a four-storey building complete with a rooftop terrace.

Designed by PLC Architects with CPC planning consultants, the project would have offered a mix of one and two-bedroom apartments with inset balconies and photovoltaic panels.

The shop would have had sales space of around 300 square metres.

However, the proposal was rejected by city planners who said it amounted to overdevelopment and that there was not enough car parking.

Their report stated: “While most of the proposed flatted dwellings would be dual aspect, 40 per cent would be single aspect.

“Apartments 5 and 12 are shown to be the smallest in size in addition to having a single aspect above the service area for the retail unit and over a builders’ merchant yard.

“These have been raised multiple times with the applicant as not demonstrating amenity that is ‘similar if not better than that of dual aspect flats’.

“The applicant was requested to design out these small, single aspect flats, which would bring the proposal within the density range for a site in the outer urban area and would reduce the shortfall in residents’ parking.

“This amendment has been resisted and a justification was provided. The justification is not considered to outweigh this policy tension.

“The proposal is overdevelopment of the site and is therefore poorly designed.”