Bid to bring empty shoe shop back into use as homes

A former shoe shop in a once busy shopping hub is looking to convert into two homes.

The reboot at Kenley’s in Bells Road, Gorleston, will see the shop, empty since it shut in 2014, remodelled and extended.

Planning permission for flats was granted in 2016 but the new application proposes a house at the front and another at the back.

It will mean adding a two-storey, flat-roof extension but the impact on neighbours is said to be minimal and little different to what was being put forward before.

For some 50 years sole trader Kenneth Lee sold shoes the old-fashioned way in the days when footwear was made to last and mended many times before being thrown away.

He stepped into retirement in 2014, one of the last independent traders of his era, still selling styles that had been in stock so long they had come back in fashion.

Papers supporting the plans say Bells Road was “once a healthy commercial hub” which was now “predominantly residential.”

MORE: The joy of shopping in Gorleston’s Bell’s Road