WORK has started on a £7m development at Hampshire tennis and leisure mecca the Centrecourt Hotel at Basingstoke.

This will result in an extra 40 jobs being created at the hotel.

The Centrecourt is already a tennis player's dream, with five outdoor and five indoor courts providing great service along with an associated leisure club.

The work is due for completion in a year's time.

When finished, it will leave the Centrecourt as the nucleus of an enlarged hotel and leisure club.

Marston Hotels say the plan allows for 40 additional bedrooms, new hotel entrance and public areas and extensive conference, banqueting and wedding facilities including a new Marston Suite.

This is a self-contained suite that sub-divides into two rooms with a total capacity for a wedding or dinner-dance of 200.

It will have its own entrance, bar, breakout lounge and toilet facilities.

Work planned also includes a refurbished restaurant and bar with a conservatory overlooking the Centrecourt, additional brasserie-style restaurant and bar, a new leisure entrance, easily accessible from a new bigger car park and new leisure reception and shop.

Sporting facilities are to include creation of a further indoor tennis court in the current gymnasium, a second swimming pool and enlarged group fitness studio with new gymnasium, and wireless cardio theatre.

There will also be enlarged female changing rooms and new male changing rooms, family changing facilities, a new sauna and steam rooms and full beauty treatment facilities, designated reception and six treatment rooms.

Hotel general manager Jeremy Wall said all building work would be carried out between 8am and 4pm and any noise and inconvenience would be kept to a minimum.

Alterations to the existing leisure facilities will not take place until the summer of 2003 and the club will remain open with a planned schedule of work so as to minimise disruption.