PLANS to demolish a car dealership and build flats have been thrown out after they were deemed "overbearing".

Southend Council’s planning officers have ruled the plans to build seven flats on the site at 1450 London Road, Leigh, would be too dominant and would cause “significant harm” to the surrounding area.

Previous proposals for nine flats on the site were refused by Southend Council but were given the green light by the planning inspectorate at appeal in 2022.

However, no work has begun at the site.

The latest application sought consent to part-demolish the existing car showroom fronting London Road and to build two additional floors to increase the overall scale to four storeys and making it “wholly residential”.

An existing rear workshop would be replaced with a new, two-storey detached house .

The council received eight letters of representation for the latest application. Concerns raised included overdevelopment, overlooking and loss of privacy, loss of light, poor design, overbearing scale and parking worries.

Residents were also concerned about noise and disturbance during construction work and that the site layout was “inconsistent with land registry plans”.

Bernard Arscott, chairman of Leigh Town Council, said: “It was quite a large development and really out of keeping with the area. There are flats along there and there have been other developments but these were larger any of the other developments in that area.

“I welcome the decision. Any development in that area needs to be proportionate in its scale to the area and in keeping. It’s an area where there are a lot of issues to do with parking and its an area that is already heavily developed.”

In their report, planning officers said the “demonstrable harm is significant in degree and is not outweighed by any public benefits”.

They added: “The proposed development would, by reason of its siting, scale, form, detailed design and choice of materials, create a visually dominant and incongruous feature, out of keeping with and significantly harmful to the character and appearance of the application site, the street scene and wider area.”