A FORMER hotel in Bovey Tracey can continue to be used for residential accommodation, planners have agreed.

The Edgemoor Hotel in Lowerdown, now known as Edgemoor Manor, had been operated by owner Simon Crow and his wife since 2008.

Business plummeted during the Covid pandemic and attempts to sell the property as a going concern proved fruitless.

No longer commercially viable as a hotel, Mr Crow created nine en-suite letting rooms with residents given the use of a large shared kitchen.

Teignbridge Council granted a licence for the property to be used as a House of Multiple Occupation in January 2025 but in July informed Mr Crow he should also obtain planning permission for a Change of Use.

That has now been approved subject to several conditions including that the building should be occupied by no more than eight separate households and 10 people at any one time.

This is to prevent overcrowding and ensure the occupiers experience an ‘appropriate level of residential amenity’.

All nine rooms are on the first floor of the building which began life as a grammar school in 1879 before becoming a hotel.

A council officer report said a planning policy specifically permitted the conversion and re-use of existing redundant or disused buildings in the countryside for residential purposes .

The report said: ‘This is where it secures the re-use of a redundant or disused building which is a heritage asset or has architectural merit and conversion would conserve or enhance its heritage significance or architectural merit.’

Last year, Mr Crow told a meeting of Bovey Tracey Town Council’s Planning and Environment Committee, he recalled the time when the impact of the pandemic became fully apparent.

Speaking about the prospect of having to rebuild the business, he said: ‘We couldn’t do it again, we were exhausted.’

Mr Crow said staffing costs of £300,000 per year weren’t sustainable and the new HMO arrangement had created homes with ‘an amazing community spirit going on’.

He and his wife still live in the building.