The new owner of the former Atherfield Bay Holiday Resort has submitted an application to the council’s planning department requesting changes to several of the planning conditions.
Royale Parks (a subsidiary of the Royale Resorts Group), carried out the redevelopment of the site, but this company went into administration in 2023 before the development could be completed and opened.
The new owner, Encore Leisure Propco Limited, acquired the site from the administrators and say they plan to “rationalise and improve the scheme” approved under the 2022 Planning Consent, before bringing it into full operational use this summer (2025).
Discharged conditions
Paperwork claims the plans are aimed at improving the appearance and the facilities offered at the holiday resort, to regularise some “minor as-built deviations” from the original planning consent, and to provide the information that would have been needed to secure the discharge three of the conditions (8, 18 and 28).
There are three conditions on the 2022 Planning Consent that require discharge before the resort can operate. They relate to:
- Landscape management Plan (Condition 8);
- External Lighting (Condition 18); and
- Light Pollution Measures (Condition 28)
Tarmac and hot tubs
The application proposes changes to the location and extent of car parking areas, which have been greatly increased from original plans to 130 tarmaced spaces.
Changes to the design of the 60 lodges to add hot tubs to each of them and to “regularise a series of minor discrepancies between what is detailed on the planning application drawings referred to in the 2022 Planning Consent and what has been built on site”.
There will also a separate planning application for the creation of an activity lake and associated revisions to the site layout and landscaping scheme due to be submitted in April 2025.
Light pollution
The development sits within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and is within an SSSI site, so light pollution is an important issue for the planners. Plans reveal that 167 lights are to be installed on the site.
The condition attached to the planning permission reads:
“The holiday units hereby approved, shall not be occupied until details of light pollution attenuation measures such as timber louvres and/or additional overhangs for the holiday units A, B, D and E and the windows serving the swimming pool of the clubhouse/amenity building, and details of black-out blinds for windows to reduce light spillage have been submitted to and approved in writing by the Local Planning Authority. Development shall be carried out and maintained in accordance with the approved details.”
Rather than install wooden louvres and blackout blinds as suggested within the planning condition — which the applicant says couldn’t be enforced by the council — the applicant is proposing to “install film inside the windows which glazing is to have a lighting transmission rate no greater than 80%”.
There will also be a midnight curfew for lighting in other parts of the site.
View the plans
You can find out more about what is proposed by viewing the plans on the council’s planning register (25/00337/RVC).
The public consultation runs until Friday 11 April 2025, with a decision due by 10th June 2025
