Residents of St Ives were able to put their concerns about plans for a controversial Premier Inn to representatives of the hotel chain at a special online presentation on Monday night.

Unease at congestion, a lack of parking and the possibility of the hotel being used to house asylum seekers and homeless people during off-peak months were all raised at the event.

Whitbread, the company which owns what is the UK’s largest hotel brand, presented the ‘webinar’ to discuss its revised plans for a 90-bedroom hotel, which if approved by Cornwall Council would replace Cornwallis Nursing Home on Trewidden Road in the coastal town.

The application has been roundly criticised by residents of St Ives with more than 500 people opposing the proposed development on the council’s online planning register, with a number calling it a ‘monstrosity’.

READ MORE: Tweaked hotel plans for tourist hotspot go down badly

The online event was chaired by a PR company representing Premier Inn and featured presentations by Louise Woodruff and James Anderson, both representing Whitbread, Chris Dadds, of planning consultants JLL, and Neil Rowe, of transport consultants RGP. Members of the public were invited to post questions, which were then read out and answered by the hotel team.

The ‘webinar’ heard that Premier Inn has 13 hotels in Cornwall, with 1,000 rooms, employing more than 600 people. Newquay Seafront and Penzance were the last two hotels to open in 2020. The team said that research showed there was demand for another Premier Inn budget hotel in St Ives.

They were asked why they could not expand an existing Premier Inn in the nearby town of Hayle or even build a new one at St Erth, which has good rail links. Ms Woodruff said the Hayle hotel had already been expanded twice, was now at full capacity and was seen by the group as a separate ‘catchment’.

The reason for the site in St Ives being chosen was that consent was already given by Cornwall Council in 2016 for a 39-apartment ‘aparthotel’ on the land. The Premier Inn team said that hotel was of a similar scale to its current proposals.

 

How the revised Premier Inn in St Ives would look (Photo: Whitbread)

How the revised Premier Inn in St Ives would look (Photo: Whitbread)

 

Mr Dadds said they had listened to locals’ concerns about scale and had reduced rooms from 100 to 90, removed the top floor to reduce scale and increased the distance to properties at the rear of the proposed hotel.

He added the design was now more traditional, with a mix of granite, render and slate-like zinc on the roof to fit in with neighbouring houses.

Parking and congestion are high among the concerns of those who oppose the plans. There would only be parking on site for 20 vehicles, with the overspill using the neighbouring Trenwith car park, which residents argue gets packed in the summer months and often leads to tailbacks of traffic.

Mr Rowe said that with the agreement of Cornwall Council’s highways department, extensive parking surveys of the car park were undertaken during the Easter holiday and for ten days in August this year. He added: “The results show that the peak parking demand is between approximately noon and 3pm – a time when all Premier Inn parking demand can be accommodated on site.”

The transport consultant pointed out that the council raised no objection to the original scheme on either traffic or parking grounds. He categorically stated: “We won’t impact on congestion in St Ives.”

The Whitbread representatives said that the hotel would lead to 30 jobs in the town, would create a gross value added (GVA) economic gain of £1.7m and £90,000 in business rates revenue for Cornwall Council.

One public question asked: “Are you assuming you will be able to fill it in the winter with temporary accommodation from the Home Office or Cornwall Council?”

Mr Anderson replied: “We’re trading well – occupancy at the moment is about 85 per cent which is the highest I’ve ever known. The occupancy for all of our hotels doesn’t get below 80 or so per cent.

“The point raised about contracting with government agencies to alleviate housing pressures or to alleviate asylum requests, we don’t do that. We don’t contract into the Home Office at all at the moment for any asylum seekers, we never have done and we don’t contract formerly with local councils either to take people on housing waiting lists.

“We sometimes hear that rumour but ultimately we don’t need to do that. The hotels are full.”

They ended the meeting by saying there would be a representative from Whitbread at a meeting of St Ives Town Council’s planning committee on Thursday night when the Premier Inn application will be discussed. The council strongly objected to the original proposals in February.

'Against Premier Inn – St Ives', a Facebook group with more than 600 members, has seen some negativity about the ‘webinar’ with people saying the the questions were selective, it was “not open and accountable” and was “scripted”.

A resident said on the page: “This webinar was staged to perfectly allow Whitbread to attest that they ‘consulted with the public’. Our focus at a minimum should be on getting the message to Cornwall Council that their 2016 approval for a 39-room aparthotel cannot and must not morph into a 90-room monstrosity with totally insufficient parking.”