A historic Wirral hotel is set to be torn down after plans for new flats were passed tonight.
Hollins Hey Hotel, on Victoria Road in New Brighton, will be demolished with a new building featuring 14 apartments to be built after Wirral Council’s Planning Committee unanimously passed Derek Bowden’s plan at a meeting tonight.
The hotel has been part of the town's landscape since it was built in 1870 and many were sad to hear of its eventual closure. Last year, it was reported that former owner Ian Carruthers blamed a “dramatic reduction in turnover and profitability” after the recession in 2008-11 for the hotel’s closure and that while the development at Marine Point had increased footfall, the “most damaging aspect” had been the opening of the budget Travelodge.
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This led to a planning application being submitted to Wirral Council in 2018 from a Wallasey-based developer who wanted to bulldoze the hotel on Victoria Road and replace it with 14 “high quality contemporary” apartments with glass and marble finishings. These plans were refused by the council and refused again in May 2019 when the initial decision was appealed.
The hotel was then put on sale in October 2020 as a three bedroomed house with sea views. The Victorian property was listed by Purplebricks who suggested it could lend itself to multiple occupancy living, creating around 12 apartments.
They priced the four storey mansion at £695,000 with a large plot of land including gardens and enough parking space for 20 vehicles. It remained open as a hotel but was eventually removed from Rightmove and a new planning application went into Wirral Council last year.
The design and access statement submitted to the council said the plan has a new team who are taking the project "forward in a fresh direction". The new application reduces the design from five storeys to four, a reduction in floor area, and will take up a more central position on the site compared with the previous plans.
At tonight’s meeting of the Planning Committee, a council officer reported an objector was against the plan as they felt the applicant should convert the existing building into flats, while another resident was in favour on the basis that the existing building was in a poor state of repair and a new one would improve the look of the area.
The officer added each apartment would include two beds and be made for four people to live in. Two New Brighton councillors, Labour member Paul Martin and Tony Jones, were unable to make the meeting but wrote in support of the plan.
A joint letter from the pair said they fully supported it as a plan which brought a site back into use which has remained fallow for far too long. Mr Bowden said he was trying to produce good quality properties for the area and had already delivered more than 100 units across Wirral, mainly in Wallasey.
He added he was happy to finally get the plan over the line after several attempts. Cllr Stuart Kelly, a Liberal Democrat and the chair of the committee, asked why the applicant was planning to knock the building down rather than convert it.
Mr Bowden said he would only be able to get around eight flats into the existing building and that it would be more difficult to fulfil regulations if he converted the existing building. Labour councillor Steve Foulkes said he had no doubt the apartments would be highly desirable and that they would bring a building which was becoming an eyesore back into use. He added it was another piece in New Brighton’s jigsaw and seemed to meet all the objectives.
But a plan to demolish an existing house on Farr Hall Drive in Heswall and build six apartments was rejected on the grounds that the amenity for future residents of some of the proposed apartments would not be good enough due to greenery blocking their outlook. Conservative councillor Kathy Hodson pushed for the plan to be refused and won the vote, with the support of all Conservative councillors, two Labour members and the sole Green and Lib Dem members of the committee.
The Labour group was split, with three of its members of the committee voting against Cllr Hodson's motion for refusal. As well as this, a plan to demolish a bungalow and build a new house in Priory Road, West Kirby, was approved, as was a plan to build an attached dwelling house on Edgehill Road in Moreton.
