PLANS to build flats on the site of a demolished church in Bournemouth have been given the go-ahead.

An outline planning application for a seven storey building with 96 flats and two ground floor commercial units has been approved by the council’s planning board.

The development will be built on the site of the former Punshon Memorial Church in Exeter Road, which was demolished in April 2015.

Approval will need to be sought for any reserved matters before work on the development begins.

This latest scheme by The Mast Bournemouth Ltd follows a number of plans submitted for the empty site, which sits between two listed buildings.

In February 2015 permission was granted for a seven storey building with two commercial units, 62 flats and 45 holiday lets. However, these were condemned as “too massive, too high and above all too aesthetically weird” by Bournemouth Civic Society.

Those plans were varied in August 2015 to change the use of the holiday units to commercial sale, and in November an alternative scheme was submitted with 103 flats and a “modern contemporary design”, but this was refused by planners who deemed it too large.

Revised proposals, which were submitted last summer, were for two commercial units and 97 apartments – one more than the recently approved scheme.

The new plans also include lower ground floor parking for 16 vehicles and an “ample” amount of bicycle spaces, according to architects ARC.

In a design and access statement, they said the scheme had been “sensitively designed to ensure the development does not compete or detract from the special historic interest of the respective neighbouring listed buildings.”

The site is adjacent to the Hermitage Hotel, a Grade II listed building formerly known as Brookside and Brookside Cottage, and the Royal Exeter Hotel, also a Grade II listed building.

Bradley Cheer, of ARC, said: “We are pleased to have gained planning approval for a revised scheme for 96 apartments on the former Punshon Church site.

“This revised scheme will deliver a higher quality building with a mixture of one, two and three bedroom apartments and commercial units at ground floor level fronting Exeter Road. The external materials incorporate local Portland Stone, aluminium cladding and zinc roofing.”