The Bermuda Electric Light Company (Belco) applied for final planning permission to replace a switch gear room that was destroyed in a catastrophic fire after a fault in its system on July 14.

Belco needs to build a two-storey reinforced concrete building at No. 27 Serpentine Road in order to permanently house switch gears.

?We would like to start as soon as possible,? Belco spokeswoman Linda Smith-Wilson said on Tuesday. ?We are looking for a completion at the end of June.?

Ms Smith-Wilson said she had no idea of the cost of the build but indicated a local contractor would be used.

She said the destroyed switch gear room had been demolished and a temporary building ? expected to be finished by November 30 ? was being constructed on the same spot.

The permanent room will be in a different location in our Serpentine Road plant, she said. Belco said the construction work was part of the ongoing strengthening of Belco?s electrical system, which remained in a weakened post-blackout state.

?It will be better than it was,? she said. ?We are probably looking at a growth in our capability.?

However, the new building will not contain the same type of switch gears that exploded in July, she said.

?They will not be oil gears. They will be something else,? she said. ?We are working on that now.?

The oil encased inside the gears intensified the heat and duration that dozens of Bermuda Fire Service personnel had to fight a towering blaze inside the gear room that plunged the Island into darkness for two-and-a-half days.

Oil from the switch gears also spilled into a Serpentine Road parking lot as fire fighters hosed the burning room with water and foam.

A counselling service has sought final planning permission to convert an old Cable & Wireless property in St. George?s as a home for recovering drug addicts.

Focus Counselling Services ? care of Sandra Butterfield ? wants to develop a proposed rehabilitation centre for a maximum of 12 programme participants in ?supportive residency? at No. 37, Barry Road.

?Supportive residency means people there will have completed a 90-day in-patient treatment programme,? Ms Butterfield said on Tuesday night. ?The reason is the same ? there is no place to live in Bermuda and people need structure.?

She said all 12 residents will either be working or at school and would be subject to random urine tests.

It would be no different to other centres Focus had scattered around the Island, she said.

?They work very well,? she said. ?It?s controlled. It?s staffed. Probably no one would know they are there.?

A family doctor has sought planning approval to convert a 50-year-old St. George?s grocery store into an office.

Dr. Henry Dowling has applied for in-principle permission to add examination rooms and offices to the lower floor and extend a bar and lounge on the upper floor of No. 34 Water Street ? which is a listed building. The doctor ? presently operating with his chiropractor wife out of a King Street, Hamilton practice? said the east end institution Mello?s Grocery Store was located there until about a year ago when Mr. Mello passed away.

He added that Kippy?s bar and grill was once upstairs, but it too had been empty for six to eight months.

Dr. Dowling owned the building with his father and wanted to convert it into a ground floor doctor?s office for disabled patients, he said.

?They have two doctors in St. George?s ? Dr. West and Dr. Subair both of which are up some stairs,? he said. ?This will have handicapped access.?

The doctor, who said he was originally from St. George?s, applied to build examination rooms and filing space on the Harbourside of the property.

However, he indicated the life of the bar/lounge may be numbered as he wanted to convert the space into apartments.