Work starts on converting long-vacant Portsmouth landmark into residential flats

Work has begun to transform the former U-Need-Us party shop, which traded in the city for 96 years, into 11 flats.

Scaffolding and workers have recently been seen at the former shop on the corner of Arundel and Slindon Street, near Portsmouth.

The Searle family ran the fancy dress, joke items and party goods shop for 96 years before it ceased trading in 2019.

After the building stood empty for seven years, applicant Luke Fryer submitted plans to convert the former shop into homes.

The development will provide 11 flats, including a mix of one and two-bedroom properties across four floors.

While none of the flats will have balconies, plans include a “roof top area to provide shared amenity space for residents”.

Knights Architectural Design, which originally helped submit the plans alongside the applicant, has since left the project.

The firm previously said the homes were not designed to be student accommodation.

Planning permission was granted in June 2023, but work only appears to have started recently. It is currently unclear who the developer carrying out the work is.

The plans received a mixed reaction when they were considered by Portsmouth City Council.

The Portsmouth Society said the scheme “provides a moderate height with reasonable size city centre residential accommodation such as needed by the City and will improve the look of buildings along the Slindon Street precinct aspect; this is designed by a local business and possibly of a scale that could be undertaken by a moderate size, hopefully local, builder – all of which we support.”

U-Need-Us closed after its owners blamed the growth of online shopping for speeding up the business’s decline.

The closure came just weeks after John Lewis shut the Knight & Lee department store on Palmerston Road.

Around 1,000 people commented on the announcement when the owners revealed the shop would close.

At the time Debbie Haggan, whose grandfather opened the business, said: “We’ve been part of lots of happy occasions and we do think our granddad and our dad would be very proud of us being here as long as we have.”