Plans to bring café and flats to Needham Market’s former town hall in High Street withdrawn

Plans to bring a café and two flats to a former town hall have been withdrawn amid concerns over the impact on the historic building.

The application, submitted by DAB Associates Ltd in April, proposed internal alterations to Needham Market’s Grade II listed town hall to create a new café space at the rear of existing ground floor units and two flats — one one-bedroom and one two-bedroom — on the first floor.

The High Street building is currently home to a mix of residential and commercial uses including a flat, a bric-a-brac shop, a beauty salon, an upholstery business and a bicycle repair shop.

Despite a ‘general consensus of approval’ from Needham Market Town Council, the plans were officially withdrawn on Thursday, June 12, following heritage feedback from Mid Suffolk District Council.

In the planning documents, the council’s heritage officer raised concerns that the proposals would cause ‘a medium level of less than substantial harm’ to the building as a designated heritage asset and a ‘low level of less than substantial harm’ to the wider conservation area.

The objections centred on significant changes to the building’s historic layout, including the proposed subdivision of a first-floor space originally designed as an open lecture room.

This space, once intended to impress with its detailed roof trusses, panelling and stage, would have been split into two flats — a move the council said would ‘remove much of this grandeur’.

The heritage response also said the full impact of the alterations on features such as the staircase balustrades, panelling and flooring had not been clearly demonstrated and the level of harm was not justified within the proposal.

While the developer argued the scheme would bring underused parts of the building into productive use — with the flats meeting national space standards and plans for restoration of brickwork and windows — the heritage officer concluded that the proposal did not represent a viable use of the building and failed to explore less harmful alternatives.