Plans have been lodged to turn the old Thames Water offices in Kembrey Park into 110 flats, which means the company that spent years deciding whether your bathroom pressure was acceptable will shortly be living among people whose bathroom pressure is, for once, somebody else's problem.
The application, from Flower Estates Walnut Ltd, proposes converting Walnut Court from offices into 110 self-contained flats, arranged across three linked wings on the ground and first floors, with two further two-bedroom units tucked into the basement. The building dates from the late 1980s or early 1990s and sits on a 5.71 acre plot. Thames Water moved out in September, relocating to Newbridge Square in the town centre, leaving the site for Swindon Borough Council to consider under a prior approval application.
The scheme includes 177 car parking spaces, 117 cycle spaces in dedicated sheds, and a communal bin store fitted out with sixteen separate containers for different types of waste, which is either an admirably thorough recycling policy or proof that someone on the design team simply couldn't stop once they'd started. Nearby amenities include a Tesco Extra, Rise Fitness and Trenchers Café, and the site lies within Flood Zone 1, meaning a low probability of flooding, a detail the former occupants might find faintly embarrassing to have needed confirming.
It is understood the prior approval process will also examine noise, natural light and road safety at the existing access from Kembrey Park, which will remain unchanged, officers presumably reasoning that if the junction survived decades of meter readers and complaint letters it can survive anything.
Residents of the new flats, it is rumoured, will enjoy unusually excellent water pressure, the building apparently reluctant to let go of old habits.
"I'm not one to gossip," said Brenda Pask, 72, of Old Town, who has lived there since before it was old, "but I hear that bin store's got sixteen different bins for sixteen different kinds of rubbish. Sixteen. In my day you had one bin, one day a week, and if it didn't fit in you were a disgrace to the street. Ron used to flatten his own tins with his shoe. Nobody needs sixteen bins. Nobody's rubbish is that interesting."
Gary Tench, Area Manager at Tench Paper Solutions in Westlea, said the conversion had given him a new way of thinking about the office. "Change of use, basically, that's all any of us are going through," he said. "I've already asked Julie whether my corner of the Westlea unit counts as a two bedroom if you include the stock cupboard. I actually wrote a song about it, it's called 'Prior Approval', it's with the band, The Return Values, we're playing it at the Christmas do, assuming head office don't convert that into flats as well."
A decision is expected in due course. Walnut Court declined to comment, on account of currently being neither offices nor flats, but somewhere unnervingly in between.