Plans for a 132-room hotel with a rooftop bar have been approved.

The building will sit on the site of the former Mothercare in Week Street, Maidstone.

With nearly 6,000 sq m of floor space, it will include a café, restaurant and an accessible rooftop bar with views across the town.

However, there are no plans for additional parking spaces for guests and staff at the hotel.

Parts of the building facing onto Week Street will be three storeys high, while the section behind Colman House will be nine storeys.

Developers estimate the hotel will bring an extra £650,000 in annual spending to the County Town and up to 44 jobs.

Dexter Moren Associates' (DMA), who drew up designs for client Assetrock Maidstone, says red bricks, locally-sourced ragstone cladding and copper banding details will be used, with the appearance hopefully "complementing the character of the local buildings and settle the new build unobtrusively into the street."

Herbert Lui, partner at DMA added: "There were concerns about putting a new-build hotel onto such a sensitive site, fronting onto a key shopping street, surrounded by low-rise and historically important buildings and bordered by three conservation areas.

"However, we worked closely with planning officers, the design review panel, committee members and stakeholders to create a design that both fits in with its surroundings and brings a new energy to the high street area."

Mr Lui added: "The client's brief was to explore the opportunity to re-develop the site with a landmark building to match the 11-storey office building next to it. We worked hard to reassure the authorities, through our designs and choices of materials, that this new hotel would be a respectful and quality piece of architecture and a positive contributor to the regeneration of the town centre -with elements such as the publicly accessible roof top bar likely to attract patrons from outside the hotel."

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