Multi-million pound plans have been submitted for a new hotel and flats complex on the site of the derelict Castletown Golf Links Hotel.

Fort Island Developments Ltd, part of the Dandara Group, has submitted a detailed planning application (17/01265/B) for a 4*-plus hotel with leisure and spa facilities together with 40 residential flats.

In its planning statement, Fort Island Developments said the scheme would bring ’significant, environmental, economic and social benefits to both the local area and the island as a whole’.

Under the proposals, the ’disused, deteriorating and unsightly’ Castletown Golf Links Hotel, closed since 2007, will be demolished.

In its place would be built The Links Hotel with 40 bedrooms, a spacious hotel lobby, a bar and restaurant with panoramic views over the sea, swimming pool, gym, spa treatment rooms and a meeting room arranged on the ground floor around a landscaped courtyard.

The luxury flats, comprising 21 two-bedroom flats and 19 three-bedroom flats, some offering 360-degree views over the Langness peninsula and surrounding area, will be contained within blocks positioned above the hotel.

It is expected the hotel and spa will create more than 30 permanent jobs, while more than 100 people will be employed during construction.

Primarily for use by hotel guests, the facilities will be open to the public and the restaurant will be able to accommodate functions such as weddings, parties and business events.

There will also be outdoor seating, landscaped grounds, provision for outdoor events and ample on-site parking, including for coaches. Some of the parking will be withing the walls of the old hotel’s outdoor swimming pool.

The development will be a mix of heights up to five storeys, but at no point taller than the tower of the existing derelict structure.

Residents will be able to access the hotel spa, bar and restaurant facilities, and make use of other hotel services, such as concierge, catering, laundry and cleaning.

The Castletown Golf Links Hotel was bought by Fort Island Developments five years ago. It has no legal, commercial or operational connection to the adjoining golf course.

It said the existing building was not fit for purpose and had carried out extensive consultation with the tourism industry as part of a feasibility study into the commercial viability of a hotel on the site.

This concluded that a much larger hotel was unlikely to justify the significant associated operating costs and would have to shut many of its rooms to survive in all but a handful of peak weeks.

Inclusion of an enabling residential development was recognised as a legitimate way for allowing hotel schemes to ’stack up’, the developer said.

An environmental impact assessment of landscape, archaeology and cultural heritage, ecology and widlife, flood risk, traffic, noise, dust and vibration, has also been carried out which concluded the development could be undertaken within acceptable levels.

Allowing for a complete planning process and construction, it is hoped The Links Hotel complex could be open for spring 2021.

The Derbyhaven Residents’ Association has been calling for the old hotel to be pulled down and a new hotel put up in its place.

There is concern about the scale of the residential development, however.

Philip Vermeulen, owner of the golf links said the old hotel was a ’real eyesore’. ’We’ve been exposed to a building that has materially affected our business,’ he said.

He said he would not comment on Fort Island’s plans until he had seen the application.

In November 30’s Manx Independent’s letters page, reader Catherine Head wrote: ’How ashamed I felt when they [guests from the UK] could not avoid the disgraceful view of the hotel.’