A former town centre department store in Dorchester is to be re-developed with a mix of flats, shop units and offices.

The building, Princes House, was recently home to Argos and had also been a base for the senior management team at Dorset Council.

Thousands will have visited its corner unit on the High Street end of the building to receive their Covid jabs.

The building itself has frontages on Princes Street, Trinity Street and High West Street. It had previously been a department store, originally Genges, whose name is still above the door on the High Street frontage, and later Dingles.

Now a plan has been agreed for 26 flats on three floors above a range of ground floor commercial units with offices at the back of the building facing onto the car park.

Most of the flats will face onto Trinity Street.

Dorchester Town Council, which welcomed the changes, said that it hopes at least some of the flats will be 'affordable' although that has yet to be confirmed.

Dorchester Civic Society said it was worried that some of the flats would be so small that it would cause problems: "creating substandard living accommodation and storing-up problems for current and further generations."

Its statement also said that although the flats will be above minimum national space standards there was a risk of inadequate natural light and ventilation which could cause some to overheat.

The society objection said there would also be the risk of flat owners and office users, disturbing each other and was concerned about a lack of parking, cycle store and bin spaces.

Fifteen one-bed flats and 11 two-bed are shown on the plan across three floors with nine offices, concentrated on two floors.

Dorset Council planning officers agree the 'prior approval' consent for the change of use saying in response to comments from the Civic Society that all the flats would have at least one external window and did comply with the necessary regulations, adding that some changes might be negotiated later under building regulation rules as work to convert the building progresses. Externally it will look much the same as it does now.

The paperwork submitted to Dorset Council shows the applicant to be Mr M. Easton of Trinity Dorset Holdings Limited with a Salisbury-based planning agent, Allen Planning, heading up design work and permissions.

Similar changes were agreed earlier in the year to another Dorchester town centre block – Vespasian House – less than half a mile away on Bridport Road, where a conversion from offices to flats has also been sanctioned, also with commercial use on the ground floor.