Whitbread has secured planning consent to build a new 104-bedroom Premier Inn hotel in Carlisle city centre.
The design of the five-storey hotel, which will feature Premier Inn’s latest format ‘Standard’ and enhanced ‘Premier Plus’ bedrooms, needed to take account of numerous constraints including topography changes, height restrictions and the listed city wall, which forms a boundary along part of the site.
The site at West Walls on Victoria Viaduct formerly housed an historic hotel, which was demolished in 2020 after it became structurally unsafe.
Jill Anderson, acquisitions manager for Whitbread, said: “As a team we feel very passionate about this development. Bringing the site back into use as a hotel will encourage people to stay in the city centre, supporting other existing businesses as our customers eat and drink out, and will create permanent, flexible, year-round hospitality jobs with a leading FTSE 100 company – creating long-term value the city.
“Redeveloping constrained locations such as West Walls is not easy and we have overcome many hurdles to design a viable hotel development. Cumberland Council have very much been on the journey with us, and I would like to thank them for their commitment to our plans as well as the many people who have helped us to secure this planning permission. It’s fair to say we’re all thrilled with the decision from the members of Cumberland Council’s planning committee to resolve to grant our application, and I look forward to engaging with the community as we progress the delivery of our new hotel.”
