Restaurant launches in former bank building

Whitbread, the owner of the Premier Inn hotel chain, has opened its latest restaurant format on the Parade in central Leamington Spa, creating 30 jobs.

The 148-cover Bar + Block restaurant occupies the former Barclays Bank building adjacent to the Premier Inn hotel.

Whitbread converted the ground floor of the Grade II listed building while an additional 13 Premier Inn bedrooms have also been created above the ground floor restaurant as part of the same development, with a further six rooms to follow in the main hotel building in early 2019 following the conversion of the in-house Thyme restaurant.

Once complete, the Premier Inn Leamington Spa Town Centre hotel will have 100 guest bedrooms.

Graham Hedley, project and programme manager at Premier Inn, who led the extension of the hotel for Whitbread, said: “The successful extension of Premier Inn Leamington Spa is a great example of how Whitbread’s development expertise adds value to our hotel assets. By spotting an opportunity to extend the popular hotel, we have been able to bring our latest Bar + Block restaurant format to Leamington Spa, add guest bedrooms and breathe fresh life into a previously vacant listed building.”

Whitbread invested more than £3.2m in converting the Leamington Spa hotel. Work to extend the Premier Inn and create the new Bar + Block restaurant began in late June.

Bill Wareing of Wareing & Company Property Consultants advised the freehold owner on the letting.