PROPOSALS to build a hotel on a council-owned car park in the centre of Tavistock will help prevent large hikes in council tax in the years ahead, the council leader behind the plan has said.

Cllr Philip Sanders, leader of West Devon Borough Council, said the multi-million pound investment in a hotel on Abbey Rise car park ‘would help’ close a budget gap of more than £3-million a year as the Government slashed its funding to local authorities.

‘We are responding to criticism that we’re not investing in our local town,’ he said. ‘At the end of the first year of the hotel’s operation, our income less charges should equate to about 1% of the council tax, about £46,000.

‘This means we won’t have to put the council tax up by 1% for that year and will hopefully be able to bring council tax down in the years after that, because the lease charges (to the hotel company) rise with inflation but our loan costs won’t rise.

‘This will help. It will not solve our problems on its own but we’ve got to keep going.’

He said the money to build the hotel would be funded through loans and temporary borrowing from council reserves and no money earmarked for council services would be touched.

The controversial closure of the toilets in the borough – to save the council just £50,000 from the coming year’s budget – was ‘entirely separate’, he added.

Responding to criticism as to why the hotel was being built on the 56-space car park, he said it was the only site in Tavistock which had met with the hotel chain’s approval.

Other sites put forward included the old Harewood House site, the old telephone exchange off Plymouth Road and the council offices themselves at Kilworthy Park.

‘We have had discussions over six or seven years with various hotels wanting to get into Tavistock,’ said Cllr Sanders.

‘They were just not interested because the sites were too far out of town.

‘We would love to put it elsewhere but we can’t get a hotel chain interested in any other site.’

For the full story on the planned hotel, pick up today’s edition of the Tavistock Times.