A CITY centre hotel is set to close and become a retirement and nursing home for the elderly.

The South Lodge Hotel, in New London Road, will be no more if plans submitted by Carebase, which operates ten homes in the south-east including Colchester, are approved by Chelmsford Council.

A staff member at the 35-room hotel confirmed to the Weekly News it’s set to close, but no one was available to comment further.

No time scale has been set for the hotel’s closure, but room reservations can still be made on its website until the end of the April.

Carebase provides residential, nursing, respite and dementia care for older people.

Michael Hirsch, property director at the company, said the home will create 60 full time jobs, and that this wasn’t the first time the company had looked to move into Chelmsford.

He said: “We do a lot of demographic work looking at various locations and Chelmsford is a place which suffers quite heavily from a lack of provision for the number of beds for the elderly.

“We’ve tried over the years to come to sites in the city and never had success but now it looks like we may have found a site.”

Mr Hirsch added that the company have a good relationship with local authorities in the county from its homes in Colchester and Waltham Abbey.

Other homes include Redhill in Surrey and Drayton in Norfolk.

Mr Hirsch said the company was very selective in where it chooses to move.

He said: “Chelmsford is an attractive location for us and it’s the right place for a quality home, and we hope to bring something valuable to the city.”

No specific time frame has been given as to when the 61-bed care home would be open, but it’s thought it would take up to 18 months from planning approval.