MAIDENHEAD town centre could see a new six-storey ‘Grade A’ office building as plans are submitted.

The Royal Borough Council received an application for new offices with an associated café on the corner of Cookham Road and the eastern side of the Sant-Cloud Way roundabout – where an existing office block will be demolished.

The applicant, Maidenhead Cloud Gate Ltd, secured the land in 2016 where they have been in discussion with the council’s planning policy team about developing plans for the site.

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The proposal includes over 44,000sq ft of flexible grade A office space, a new café, 25 car parking spaces – including four electric charging and two accessible spaces, 40 cycle spaces, five motorcycle spaces, and a communal roof terrace.

The design statement claims the scheme will create around 400 jobs and will make ‘a significant contribution to future employment needs’.

Plans were revisited after the Royal Borough council refused a previous, much larger scheme in December 2019 because the building would cause harm to a Grade II listed building – the Wilderness – the site is adjacent to, it would ‘appear out of scale within the context of the surrounding area’ and ‘would cause significant harm to the character of the area’.

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The refreshed application revised the layout to move it away from the Wilderness and changed the design of the building to a simpler look where two office floors and a basement have been removed from the scheme – reducing the height and mass of the office block to lessen the impact of the surrounding area.

Before the plans were submitted, an online consultation was held for residents to put their views on the proposed designs and application.