Shrewsbury company plans to demolish Second World War military hut to make way for temporary storage facility

Shrewsbury firm Mar Design say they want to knock down a vacant corrugated iron "Nissen Hut" workshop at Unit 7 on Monkmoor Trading Estate to make way for 32 storage containers.

The company says the 20 by 8 feet metal containers will be used for document storage, as well as home and business storage, on a temporary basis.

So-called Nissen Huts were built by the military during the First and Second World Wars, and were designed to be used as temporary accommodation for troops, but could also be pressed into use as a variety of buildings such as kitchens, stores and workshops.

The design was developed by Canadian-American Captain Peter Norman Nissen, of 29th Company, Royal Engineers in 1916, giving the buildings their name.

Permission to demolish the workshop was granted by Shropshire Council under a separate application in 2022, but now Mar Design have applied for a certificate of lawfulness to confirm they are still allowed to knock it down - and that the containers they plan to put on site are in accordance with the site's existing permitted uses.

They existing use classes of the site - technical categories which state what a commercial building may or may not be used for - may never have been formally established, although the applicant claims a decision by Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council in 1991 regularised the building's commercial use, without formally specifing the permitted classes.

The workshop building was last used by a car repair garage company which was dissolved this month.

In November last year, the same applicant was granted permission to convert the building next door into a mixed-use scheme containing five commercial units and 8 residential flats, a scheme which was not yet started.

According to the supporting statement, the area containing the hut was included in that application as a garden space - meaning any potential new tenant for the workshop would have to be evicted once that development got underway.

"The building subject to this application was added to the site by the RAF during the Second World War and in use as a workshop type building. Since then, it has been in varying commercial uses," said a statement submitted with the application.

"There will be no new hardstanding, and the containers won’t have any electricity or drainage connections and will just be placed on the land and have no physical attachment.  

"The adjacent building has permission to be converted, and this will be commenced within three years and before occupation, this portion of land will have to be cleared of hardstanding and put to a garden area. Therefore, the containers are evidently not permanent, and their lack of physical attachment will make it easy to remove them."

The application can be viewed on Shropshire Council's online planning portal under reference 25/01494/CPL.