Whitbread-owned Premier Inn Hotels has asked Cotswold District Council for a nod to increase the capacity of the group's Cirencester operation – and hinted that the move will boost jobs locally.

Nine years on from the original permission, the Premier Inn, which is adjacent to the town's Tesco Extra at King's Meadow, on the south-east outskirts of the town, wants to reconfigure and boost its room offering by eating up part of the embedded Beefeater Restaurant.

The Beefeater is currently listed as permanently closed in the wake of Whitbread's recent move to shutter more than 200 outlets, including Brewer's Fare, as part of a national drive to add 3,500 rooms to its hotel capacity.

Simon Millett, of Knutsford-based Walsingham Planning, told the council: "Premier Inn Hotels has identified a demand for the provision of additional budget hotel accommodation in this location, having regard to the proximity of the site to Cirencester Town Centre, Cotswold AONB and its location on the road network. Equally, the existing hotel restaurant has shown a continued shortfall in demand."

The proposed reconfiguration on the 0.6-hectare site would see:

● A reduction in the size of the ground-floor restaurant area with first and second floors remaining as existing.

● Use of saved internal space to take the current 68-room capacity up to 78 rooms.

● Retention of a smaller restaurant on the ground floor.

No indication is given as to whether this would be relaunched as a Beefeater, although in May this year Whitbread indicated that closed sites (totalling 126 nationally) would be reconfigured and launched as an integral element of ongoing Premier business.

In a statement on its plans, the applicant added: "The existing Premier Inn hotel is a well-used facility providing overnight accommodation for tourists and business travellers. There is demand for additional hotel bedrooms which would create additional employment opportunities during the operational and construction phases, as well as supporting third party suppliers. The proposed extension would be built on brownfield land and would make more efficient use of the site without needing to expand outside the existing curtilage.

The statement continued: "External alterations to the façade of the existing building are required in the way of new windows, doors and rainwater goods to serve the new layout. Materials would match existing. New plant to support the hotel use would be provided within acoustic enclosures in the existing service yard (with the existing wall to be removed) and cycle parking relocated in this area."

Car parking at the site would also be cut by the changes from 88 spaces to 85 spaces, but disabled parking would increase by one space to five and parking for bicycles boosted from 76 to 92.