A luxury hotel has withdrawn plans to add 10 more rooms inside its listed building.

The Hunton Park Hotel in Essex Lane, near Leavesden, still wants to boost its offering from 60 rooms to 70 and change the internal layout, but the plans it submitted in February will not go through.

Conference and ancillary rooms would have become the new bedrooms and other changes would be made to support this, including installing ventilation and air conditioning.

According to the planning statement, conference rooms are much less valuable for hotels since the pandemic as many conferences are now held online.

A spokesperson for Countrywide Hotels, which owns Hunton Park, said: “We will be progressing with the refurbishment proposal but we need to provide more details to the council.

“During discussions with the council, it was necessary to make some minor revisions, they have asked for further details, for example how the aircon pipes run and details regarding the light fittings.

“At the council's suggestion, we withdrew the application. We will be resubmitting substantially the same application in due course.”