Entertainment centre likely to win planning approval

Officers are recommending that plans to build a 5m replacement for Hornsea Floral Hall, next to Hornsea Leisure Centre, are deferred, but then granted planning permission, at a meeting on Thursday.

East Riding Council says the centre will allow the town to host a wider range of events, including professional and amateur performances, discos and dances, and business conferences.

The authority wants to build a new venue attached to the leisure centre at the south end of the seafront, which it says will be cheaper to run.

Conditions on the planning application would mean it would open till midnight Sundays to Fridays and until 2am on Saturdays but many in the town insist that moving the venue would kill the north end of the Promenade, and they want it to stay where it is.

However the town council has recommended approval and there have been only eight letters of objection – with some concerned that the site of the Floral Hall will be used for affordable housing. The design of the replacement – which is 10m high and has a flat roof – has also been criticised as "unappealing" and looking "cramped." but planners say landscaping softens the design.

A report adds: "Proposals for the Floral Hall site do not form part of this planning application and the local planning authority has not received any application for future development on that site at the time of writing this report."

A report in 2004 said 67 per cent of residents backed rebuilding Hornsea Floral Hall on the same site. A study four years later said the popular view was for a new centre on the old site.