We have lost our battle to save the Vulcan Building from conversion into flats. The latest planning application from Berkeleys did put us into something of a quandary. It proposed the use of the ground floor of the south wing as an art gallery by the Aspex Gallery whose premises in Brougham Road are unsuitable and in need of repair.

The whole of the rest of the south and east wings would be flats. As inducement to the council to grant this permission Berkeleys undertook to withdraw their appeal against the earlier refusal of permission for the conversion of the whole building to flats.

The dilemma arose from the fact that it had been our idea to use at least some part of the building as a gallery. So it was difficult to say no to this proposal. Nevertheless we felt we had to. Our prime concern from our first seeing the inside of the building had been to save the finest spaces - the magnificent first and second floors of the south and east wings - and make them open to the public, at least on occasions. To allow any part of them to be converted to flats with bathrooms, and kitchens would lose them for ever.

We have been striving for several years to get a public, preferably cultural, use for the whole building which Gunwharf needs. At first there was the possibility that the City Museum could move there, giving their Museum Road building to Berkeleys in exchange. Then we tried big national cultural users without success.

The current application was recommended to the councillors by the planning officer and the recommendation was accompanied by a warning that to reject this or defer it for further negotiation might mean losing everything; that seemed to mean no gallery of any sort. The planning officers were concerned about the viability of proposals for reuse. Viability of this building alone or even of the whole Gunwharf complex did not seem to us to be properly the concern of the planners.

We argued that now that the building had been splendidly restored and made weatherproof, it would not hurt for the space to be left unoccupied for a few years, waiting for a worthy use; but English Heritage and the Arts Council of England also supported the application. The councillors took the warning to heart and seemed almost to forget the splendour of the interiors. Without any discussion they voted unanimously to grant permission. A very sad decision.

R.J.