PLANNERS have agreed that flats can be built on a gap site in Govanhill, 14 years after it was turned into a ‘temporary’ community garden.

Glasgow City Council officials have approved a five-storey block containing 16 flats for land at 85 Westmoreland Street, the site of the old Hampden Picture House.

Fourteen of the flats will have two bedrooms and two of them will be four-bedroom maisonettes.

There will be a communal landscaped area provided at first floor level.

The site was turned into Westmoreland Gardens — a ‘temporary greenspace’ — in 2010 under Glasgow City Council’s Stalled Spaces initiative because it was being used for fly-tipping and other anti-social behaviour.

At the time it was expected that it would be three to five years before any development took place on the privately-owned land making the £41,000 project cost viable.