A FORMER hotel in Grange-over-Sands could be converted into more than 30 new homes.

South Lakeland District Council planners meet next Wednesday to decide an application for the Graythwaite Manor Hotel on Fernhill Road, which closed in 2012.

Chorley-based Blackmores Ltd has submitted an application for 32 new dwellings consisting of 17 apartments and 15 new houses.

Planners are recommending the development get the go-ahead with 11 conditions.

There have been more than 20 representations to the plans with some raising a number of objections.

Fifty-nine car parking spaces would also be needed on the 1.9-hectare site which is in the town’s conservation area and near the primary school.

The applicants have said the level of investment needed to bring the hotel back to a modern standard made such a plan unviable, according to papers to go before SLDC’s planning committee.

A report said: “The reuse of the country house would return the building to positive use, while the demolition of later extensions to the building and their replacement with a new extension would offer an enhancement to its appearance.

“The council will only permit the loss of a hotel where there is clear evidence that the property concerned can no longer be operated as a profitable business and the proposed development would result in a major upgrading of the structural condition of the building.”

The proposal includes works to convert part of the hotel into four apartments and retain some of the “country house” element of the original building, which dates back 130 years.

Some of the later modern extensions to the property would need demolishing and a partial rebuild.

The application includes five affordable rented flats and two affordable flats for sale.

Grange Town Council has objected and said the site is outside the town’s “development boundary” and contravenes SLDC’s land allocation policy and Grange’s neighbourhood plan.

Papers to go before the planning committee said there are 60 households wanting properties in the area with more than half needing at least one bedroom.

The site was originally home to a small country house in 1899 and converted to a hotel in the 1930s.