A DERELICT building next to Runcorn Shopping City could be replaced with over 150 homes, care home and hotel if £62m plans are given the green light next week.

The council’s Development Management Committee is recommended to rubber-stamp the scheme to partially bulldoze East Lane House to make way for a mixed-use development when it meets on Tuesday.

The proposals, submitted by Shah Capital, include demolishing most of the building and constructing a nine storey apartment block with 144 apartments, nine houses – seven with two bedrooms and two with four. A quarter of the new properties would be set aside for affordable housing.

There would also be a seven storey care home with 66 rooms and a five storey, 85-room hotel run by Best Western under its ‘boutque’ Aiden brand and would include a restaurant for 60 people, gym and bar.

The plans say the  hotel would provide 28 full time jobs, while the care home would employ 10.

A public consultation ran until November 12 last year and a total of 15 representations have been received, with seven in support and eight objections.

The Royal Mail has also objected over fears of impact on traffic movements from the nearby delivery office.

Recommending approval, a report to the committee, said: “In conclusion, the proposal would deliver a mix of uses on a vacant site and deliver both housing and employment.

“The proposal is of a high quality and would bring back in the use a vacant brownfield site. The proposal is not considered to have an adverse effect to surrounding properties.”

The long-abandoned building has been targeted by arsonists in the past and has a long planning legacy.

This latest application is the third for the site since 2005, with previous plans including a shopping centre and conversion into 448 flats.

The flats plan was approved on appeal in 2015, but nothing came of the proposal as the then-owners – Absolute Living Developments – collapsed into liquidation. Shah Capital picked up the site in 2016, but this is the first formal planning application the company has brought forward.