A PREMIER Inn hotel in Ellesmere Port has launched plans to increase the number of rooms on site by removing the hotel’s restaurant in favour of a smaller breakfast room.

The Burleydam hotel, located on Chester Road, Childer Thornton is proposing to add 17 new rooms, taking its total capacity from 67 rooms to 84.

To accommodate the new rooms, the hotel’s Brewers Fayre restaurant, which closed in July, will be removed, with the smaller relocated breakfast room created serving hotel guests only.

The works will be mainly internal with some minor external work, as well as the demolition of a modern extension to the northwest of the Grade II listed Thornton Hall, which will be replaced by landscaping and paving.

Specialist planning and heritage consultants, Walsingham Planning, state: “The hotel building will continue to be acceptable in terms of its location, scale, design and the changes will have no negative impact on amenity.

“The proposal is fully compliant with policies within the NPPF in relation to economic growth and sustainable development as well as local policies relating to sustainable development and economic growth. The development offers an opportunity for additional economic, tourism and sustainability benefits in a well-established and highly accessible location.

“This reconfiguration of the site will secure its economic future and support the local economy, by ensuring the best use of available land is made by the applicant the site will continue to flourish into the future.”

Whitbread PLC, who own Premier Inn and Brewers Fayre, announced plans this summer to add 3,500 new hotel rooms to its sites across the UK, with £500m being invested to help ‘integrate’ food and drink, by opening more restaurants inside of its hotels.

As part of that plan, 238 of its ‘lower-returning’ restaurants are set to close. The new plans suggest that the Brewers Fayre at The Burleydam had been identified as one such restaurant.