AMBITIOUS plans to turn a former bank into a restaurant and two flats have been turned down by planners.

The bid by Edinburgh-based Format Design to convert the former Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) building in Prestonpans was rejected as “inappropriate” and “unsympathetic”.

A report by East Lothian Council’s planners also found it would require 20 car parking spaces to serve the new facilities, which would have to be found on the street.

The plans put forward for the former bank building on Ayres Wynd would have seen the ground floor converted into a restaurant, with two storeys added on the top and residential accommodation created there.

No details of the type of restaurant planned for the site were released.

Refusing the application, planners said the extension to the single storey building would appear “as an incongrouous and unsympathetic addition to it”.

And they said the council’s current parking space policy would require 20 off-street spaces for the changed building, where the bank had only been required to have two.