Butlins expects to open £20m Bognor hotel in July next year

The company is able to begin work on creating the 200-bedroom tourist attraction after councillors welcomed the scheme.

The seven-storey spa hotel will cost some 20m and will complement the existing Shoreline Hotel.

It will be the biggest hotel Bognor has ever seen. It will be able to accommodate 720 guests in a range of contemporary double, twin and extended suites and family rooms.

Boasting an ultra-modern exterior, the hotel is being sited where a boating lake once stood.

Its car park will be the two-storey former call centre building immediately in front of motorists as they drive south along the A259 Felpham Way towards the holiday site.

Butlins' parent company, Bourne Leisure, will delay demolishing the call centre until this November to reduce the nuisance to guests from noise and dust during the summer.

The spa hotel's completion will see 256 Oyster Bay chalets, which date from the 1960 opening of Butlins in Bognor, demolished.

They are in four rows in the north west corner of the site.

Jeremy Sayer, a director of PWP Architects, which created the design, told members of Arun District Council's development control committee: "The chalets no longer meet the aspirations of 21st century holidaymakers.

"This hotel will be an improvement to Butlins and the accommodation on the site and an improvement to Bognor.

"This forms part of the wider regeneration of Bognor town centre.

"The spa hotel will provide a positive landmark to provide modern accommodation. Getting rid of the chalets will certainly do that as well."

The recent Shoreline Hotel had been extremely successful with 92 per cent occupancy all year round, he added.

Adding an hotel to the holiday site was the first phase of a masterplan by Bourne Leisure to regenerate it entirely.

Cllr Ricky Bower (East Preston) said: "I very much welcome this proposal.

"The opening of the Shoreline Hotel was a great plus for Butlins and for Bognor.

"I see this hotel being of equal benefit, if not greater, because it starts to reduce some of the appalling accommodation from the Sixties."

Cllr Richard Evans (Bognor Marine) said: "I am really quite excited by what I have seen of Butlins' plans and what the site could look like some years' hence.

"Well done to Butlins and Bourne Leisure on raising the profile of this part of our town."

Council planning officer Keith Wheway commented that the design of the hotel was in keeping with the area and that a new landmark on the location was completely acceptable.

'It is not considerable that the building will have an adverse effect on the visual or residential amenities of the nearest neighbouring dwellings,' he added.

After the meeting, hotel project director Mike Crowther promised: 'The new hotel will look breathtaking.'

It will provide up to 200 new jobs for people in the Bognor area.

Butlins in Bognor can accommodate 5,000 holidaymakers in about 1,500 apartments as well as 650 in the Shoreline Hotel.