Birmingham police station to become Domino’s pizza takeaway

A campaign to prevent a former police station from being turned into a Domino’s pizza takeaway has failed as city planners approved the scheme at the weekend.

The station, off Kingstanding Road, near Kingstanding Circle, was closed in 2019 after being deemed surplus to requirements. A petition was launched in April earlier this year by local ward councillor Darius Sandhu and campaigner Alex Hall to stop Domino’s in its tracks.

They argued Kingstanding already had too many takeaways in the vicinity and the building was not appropriate for the use of a pizza kitchen. Meanwhile, planning officers at Birmingham City Council said it was an ‘acceptable development’ within an ‘excellent sustainable area’.

They added that any alterations to the front of the historic building would have ‘very little impact’ on the visual amenity and would not change the character of the building. Officers also argued that policy requires local centres such as Kingstanding Circle to have a minimum of 50 per cent of all ground floor spaces occupied by retail, while only 10 per cent can be hot food takeaways.

They claim the new Domino’s would bring the Circle’s takeaway quota up to 8.3 per cent. Domino’s is now free to move into the ground floor of the old police station after the council published its decision on Friday, June 30. The plans lodged by Pegasus Group on behalf of Domino’s Pizza claim a number of new jobs will be created and that the takeaway will be open between the hours of 11am and midnight.

Kingstanding Circle is set to undergo major changes in the near future as Lidl plans its demolition of the fire-damaged Kingstanding Pub and part of Kingstanding Shopping Centre. The supermarket has said it wants to restore and improve the local centre’s quality and enhance customer shopping choices.