DEVELOPERS want to build a hotel and restaurant on the derelict site of a former Hampshire pub.

Plans have been unveiled for the complex on the site of the former Flying Boat pub in Calshot, which closed in the late 1990s and which was demolished about two years ago.

The run-down patch of land has become an eyesore in the village, which has few amenities and poor public transport links.

Fawley Parish Council clerk Malcolm Anderson told the Daily Echo: "The parish council is strongly in support of it.

"The Flying Boat site at the moment is a heap of rubble and we think this would improve it drastically, bring more tourists in and increase the infrastructure of Calshot.

"We realise that the facilities in Calshot are non-existent really and we think some kind of development like this may help."

Jon Holmes, chairman of the Calshot Neighbourhood Group, was more tentative because the plans were at such an early stage.

He said: "I was a bit surprised to see the application go in for a restaurant and pub because that is exactly what was previously on the site and which was run into the ground because they couldn't make it pay."

Hythe-based developer Stoneclose Limited has so far submitted an application for only outline planning permission to build a 24-room hotel, pub, restaurant and function room, with provision for 84 car parking spaces.

If it is approved it will then lodge a more detailed application to build on the land at Calshot Road.

The proposal was submitted soon after New Forest District Council ditched plans to build 200 houses on the site after the plan was condemned at a public inquiry.