Welcome
Welcome to the website about our plans for a new Premier Inn hotel in the heart of Dorchester.
Our vision is to redevelop the site of the former Marks & Spencer store on South Street, to provide a high-quality Premier Inn hotel of approximately 100 bedrooms.
We have designed a new hotel which fronts onto South Street, with an active ground floor frontage, at a location that will appeal to our business guests and those looking to stay in the heart of Dorchester for leisure.
Following a period of public consultation during 2023, we considered the feedback received from the local community, amended our initial proposals and recently submitted a planning application to Dorset Council.
This has been validated and the council is now running its own consultation on our proposals. These can be found on the Dorset Council online planning portal, under reference P/FUL/2024/02583, where you can also leave comments until 21/06/2024.
If we are granted planning permission, the hotel will be built and owned by Whitbread – Premier Inn’s parent company. This would see an investment of an estimated £11 million in the local economy during construction and create the equivalent of around 30 full-time jobs on opening.
If approved, the hotel would provide a second Premier Inn hotel for Dorchester and would help to meet the significant demand for family-friendly affordable accommodation, of a consistent quality, for the many business and leisure travellers who visit Dorchester throughout the year. Our Premier Inn hotel at Brewery Square is often fully booked, and we have no plans to close it if our plans for South Street go ahead.
Consultation
Consultation
We held a public exhibition in the former Marks and Spencer store on Wednesday 6th September and an online webinar on Thursday 7th September 2023.
Following review of the feedback we received, we reviewed our proposals ahead of submitting our plans to Dorchester Council. Our planning application can be viewed on the Dorset online planning portal under reference P/FUL/2024/02583.