Planning permission is being sought (21/00847/A), in principle, to build six townhouses on the hillside behind the Queen’s Hotel pub on Douglas Promenade.

Company Elliott Construction, which owns the site, described it as currently ’laying desolate’ and ’an eyesore on the existing area’.

In a planning statement, it added that vandals often ’dump traffic cones and other items of street furniture’ on the plot of land.

The townhouses would be four-bedroom with open plan kitchens/dining/living area, office space and family bathrooms. The houses would also have a rooftop terrace.

Those behind the application said the house frontages overlooking the Queen’s Hotel would have ’a more traditional appearance’ while the rear sides facing Switzerland Road would ’reflect that of a more modern housing scheme’.

Parking spaces would be provided with a hardstanding area on each house’s frontage.

Sixteen sycamore trees would need to be felled for the development, but the planning statement cites an impact assessment which notes them as being of ’low value’.

The planning statement cited an ecological report which concluded that the site was of ’low level of nature conservation interest on the site due to the lack of valuable habitat’. The statement also argued that though the site is located within the Douglas promenade conservation area, it is also inside the ’predominantly residential’ designation on the Douglas local plan order 1998 and is designated ’mixed use’ for development.

Approval in principle was previously sought in 2017, but this application was rejected on the grounds of it not having sufficient information accompanying it.

This site has been developed in the past, when many decades ago a series of terrace gardens existed there.