PERMISSION has been granted to build a £40m hotel and apartment block at the site of a derelict hotel – despite major concerns over the shortage of car parking spaces.

At a meeting of Bournemouth council’s planning board yesterday, proposals for a four-star, 131-bedroom hotel with a sky bar and 66 residential flats at the Belvedere Hotel site were laid out before councillors.

The former 102-bedroom hotel on the corner of St Peter’s Road and Bath Road has been derelict for two years.

However, the proposed provision of 82 spaces – of which only 11 are designated for the hotel – raised fresh concerns from members.

Cllr Lynda Price said there was a “frightening” shortage of spaces, while Cllr Stephen Bartlett said the estimated 170 staff members would “only add to the parking issues”.

These concerns were echoed by Rosie Wallace, managing director of Marsham Court Hotel, who said car parking was a "major issue" for other hotels in the area.

“We have 90 car parking spaces and 87 bedrooms and it is clearly not enough,” she said.

“Bath Road is an absolute nightmare with traffic, but if you’ve got people stopping to do drop-offs and pick-ups with nowhere to go straight after that, it’s going to be atrocious."

Officers said guests at the new hotel would have use of the public multi-storey car park at the Berry Court development in St Peter’s Road, where a block of 113 flats has been given the go-ahead.

Councillors all agreed the redevelopment of the Belvedere Hotel site was a “welcome” scheme. The derelict building was being used by rough sleepers until June last year, when it caught fire.

There were mixed views on the scheme’s design attributes, with ward councillor David Smith calling it “boxy” and “bland”, while Cllr Bartlett said the “landmark” scheme was not exciting.

A move to adjourn the meeting so the parking issues could be re-considered reached a stalemate, but a successive move to approve the plans was favoured by five out of the nine board members.

Michael Bibring, co-founder of Fresh Lime Developments, said he was “absolutely delighted” the scheme had been given the green light.

“We think it’s an absolutely first-class design and everyone who has seen it has agreed with that.

“We understand there were concerns about insufficient parking, but the hotel does not actually want parking and will operate perfectly well without it using existing resources.”