Ansell Garden Centre in West London has been granted planning permission by Hillingdon Council to rebuild the centre which was destroyed by a massive blaze just over a year ago.

On Facebook the garden centre said: “A year and 2 weeks after the devastating fire we have just received planning permission to rebuild. So happy to share this picture with you guys.”

An artist’s impression of the new building is illustrated above.

After the fire last year managing director Paresh Raithatha spoke to GTN Xtra about the amazing response they’d had from both the garden industry and customers, and vowed to rebuild the business

“It has been immense,” said Paresh at the time. “The kind words have kept us going through some dark times over the past week. On Facebook alone we’ve received 50,000 messages.

“This level of support gave us the push we needed to get back on our feet and rebuild this business. We face a long road ahead but we’ll be back. And we’re determined to make the garden centre even better than before.”

The garden centre was gutted when a huge fire broke out. It took around 100 firefighters more than five hours to bring the flames under control, with huge plumes of smoke seen in the sky from miles around.