A Kenilworth hotel and Malaysian restaurant is set to stay open for the foreseeable future despite plans to demolish the building being approved last week.

Councillors last week approved a planning application to knock down the Peacock Hotel and replace it with nine homes.

The application said the site - which is also home to Raffles restaurant - needed to be redeveloped as it has struggled since the pandemic.

But following Warwick District Council's decision last week, the hotel has said it is "really busy" and has called on local people to keep the "successful family business" running.

General manager Peri Murugaraman told Nub News: "We applied for the planning permission but we are not going to close for the near future and we are going to run the hotel and restaurant as usual.

"We are really busy with accommodations and restaurant at present due to lack of accommodation/hotel/bedrooms available within Kenilworth area.

"As you know very well that Woodside Hotel, Arden Guest House, Victoria Lodge, and two other guest houses in Priory Road and Station Road changed to family houses."

While Cllr Richard Dickson raised concerns about the increased traffic on Warwick Road, councillors gave their backing to the project which could see the hotel and no. 151 Warwick Road demolished and replaced with two three-bedroom detached houses and a pair of semi-detached three-bedroom homes.

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To the rear, the outbuildings would be demolished and replaced with five two-bedroom apartments and parking spaces.

The scheme to knock down the hotel, which was unanimously approved by the planning committee, was the latest in a number of applications to repurpose the 32-bed venue.

Separate proposals to turn it into student accommodation and apartments were both submitted and withdrawn in 2022.

And the owners had already been granted permission in 2019 to turn the hotel into student accommodation, but the development never went ahead.

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