A YORK Chinese restaurant has been told its plans for an Oriental pergola are ‘acceptable’ but a storage building at the rear is not.

Mr Raymond Wong sought to undertake the work at Maxi’s Restaurant on Ings Lane, North Poppleton, just off the Outer Ring Road and behind the Wetherby Whaler.

His planning application to City of York Council said since closing a Leeds branch one of his major expenses is using third-party storage to keep restaurant equipment due to a lack of space at the York site.

The proposed steel-framed storage building would be behind the restaurant, screened off from Ings Lane. The pergola would be in the front entrance of the car park and would promote the restaurant.

Nether Poppleton Parish Council raised no objection to the proposal.

City planners also felt the pergola was acceptable as it would match the advertising for the venue and not harm the visual amenity of the street scene.

However, planning staff said the metal clad storage shed “would appear highly jarring, alien and incongruous within the wider scene.”

It would relate ‘poorly to the existing building and its scale seemed “substantially in excess of what is necessary for what is said would be a temporary storage use.”

Therefore, they concluded this would “unacceptably erode the setting of the site and the form and character of the wider area” and the application should be refused.