Eight-year battle to turn former North Berwick bank into home won

An Edinburgh couple have won an eight-year battle to turn a former bank in North Berwick into a home.

Pat Sharp and her husband Nigel bought the vacant building on the town’s Westgate for more than £550,000 in 2018 after it was put on the market by the Royal Bank of Scotland.

But while the purchase was intended to allow them to retire to an accessible home for Nigel, who has Parkinson’s Disease, Pat is now planning to put it back on the market as her husband’s condition means he is now in full time care.

She described the battle to get planning permission to create a residence in their property as “exhausting” after East Lothian Council planners repeatedly rejected their applications.

They said the use of the building for a residential home would be an unacceptable loss of a commercial property in the town centre but have now approved plans to maintain the ground floor as two commercial officers and create an extended first floor flat above it.

The new proposals would see a one bedroom flat built above the new offices with it own separate door and access.

The Sharps bought the building for more than £550,000 when it first went on the market as Nigel’s health battle made it clear their first floor flat in Edinburgh would not be suitable in the future.

It was also meant to be a place their grandchildren could come on holiday near the beach after they lost their mother to cancer. One of her last wishes had been that her own mother, Pat, recreated the seaside holidays they had shared when she was young for her daughters.

Speaking after the last application was rejected last year Pat said the couple’s dreams of spending their retirement in the town had been shattered by the drawn out battle with planners.

She said: “My husband has been robbed of the chance to spend his final years in what we wanted to be our dream home, looking out over the North Berwick coast and remembering all our wonderful times here.”