A BOSCOMBE hotel could be demolished and replaced by a four or five storey block of 33 flats.

Planning papers have been submitted this week for the Liston Hotel site at the junction of Boscombe Cliff Road and Wollstonecraft Road.

Lauder Property Ltd and Dorset Homes Ltd plan to build sixteen two-bed flats; six one-bed and eleven three-bed flats on the 0.2 hectare site, with the new building finished in buff brick, white-painted render and zinc cladding.

Their planning statement to BCP council claims the 25-bed hotel with its own function room and restaurant “is of little architectural merit and does nothing to positively reflect the setting of the Boscombe Manor Conservation Area, whose boundary is contiguous with the eastern and northern boundaries of the site. The hotel appears to date from the 1960s and has reached the end of its functional life.”

The companies say they would increase parking on the site from eight spaces to 27 and claim the development would fit in well with the area, which has a mix of buildings ranging from four to eight-storey.

An outline planning application for the site was submitted in 2019 for demolition of the hotel and its replacement with 24 flats, and was approved, with conditions, in March 2021.

The developers say the new design is ‘more modern’ than the previous 'art deco' style with larger windows and strong vertical lines and the site's redevelopment will help the council with its estimated shortfall of 5,500 homes anticipated in the emerging Local Plan for the Bournemouth area.

Papers with the application claim that the hotel is no longer financially viable and that housing would fit in better with the existing uses of sites in Boscombe Cliff Road and Wollstonecraft Road.

The developers say they will add to the planting on the site and claim there would be landscape gain from the removal of a large area of tarmac on the Wollstonecraft Road frontage.

Full details of the application, BCP reference 7-2021-8500-S, can be viewed on the council’s website where comments on the application can also be made until the end of July.