Premier Inn second Chichester site: remediation and access design notes for engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Whitbread has acquired a fully serviced freehold plot on Bognor Road, beside the A27/A259 junction in Chichester, to build an 82‑bedroom Premier Inn, adding to its existing 83‑room hotel at Gate Leisure Park. The brownfield site, a former World War II fuel depot, required full remediation plus a new slip lane and signalised junction off the A259, a bus stop, a 220‑metre estate road and services driven under the A27 before sale. Construction is scheduled to start this spring, with Whitbread’s in‑house team leading delivery.
Technical Brief
- On‑carriageway bus stop provision introduces additional kerbside loading and pavement design considerations on the A259 frontage.
- Brownfield remediation and off‑site highway works were completed pre‑sale, de‑risking programme and ground uncertainty for the hotel build.
- Similar brownfield roadside hotel schemes can expect major upfront costs in remediation and junction upgrades before vertical construction.
Our Take
Whitbread’s move to add an 82-room Premier Inn in Chichester echoes its Southwark Dorset House office-to-hotel conversion, signalling a strategy of densifying its UK estate in both regional centres and core London locations rather than relying solely on new city-centre flagships.
With two Premier Inns totalling around 165 rooms focused on the A27/A259 corridor, Chichester starts to resemble other south coast nodes in our infrastructure coverage where midscale hotel capacity is being built around strategic road junctions rather than rail hubs.
The 220 m estate road built into the Bognor Road scheme suggests Whitbread and Hanbury Properties are front-loading enabling works, which typically shortens the critical path to opening compared with urban refurbishments like Dorset House that depend more on complex internal reconfiguration.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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