Planning officers at Norwich City Council want members to approve plans to bulldoze the Nelson Hotel on Prince of Wales Road and replace it with a 248-room hotel and 492 student flats, 

The new hotel would rise seven storeys and reach up to 25 metres at its tallest point, close to double the height of the current building.

Illustration of what the new hotel could look like (Image: Sheppard Robson Architects)

The scheme - submitted by Whitbread, the hospitality giant which owns the current building and operates it as a Premier Inn - also includes around 75 flats near Mountergate and a new riverside park where the hotel's private garden currently sits.

The site faces Norwich railway station and is identified in the council's own Local Plan as one of the city's key "gateway" locations.

Planners say the existing hotel is a "negative structure" that forms "a poor gateway backdrop" to anyone arriving in the city by train.

The present........

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