Whitbread has secured planning permission to convert Dorset House, a former office building on Stamford Street in Southwark, into a 421-bedroom hub by Premier Inn hotel.
The consent marks the latest step in an active year for the owner of Premier Inn, which has acquired four Central London office buildings for hotel conversion since January 2025, adding close to 1,000 bedrooms to its secured development pipeline.
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Dorset House, a nine-storey vacant office building close to Waterloo and Blackfriars stations, will become the first hub by Premier Inn south of the River Thames. The site is also within walking distance of the South Bank and the Royal Festival Hall.
Whitbread acquired the 90,000 sq ft building freehold in May 2025 and began discussions with Southwark Council shortly afterwards on a change of use. The plans retain the existing floorplate, add compact hub bedrooms and introduce a new hotel entrance on Stamford Street, alongside basement-level food and beverage space.
Construction is expected to start in the second half of 2026, with the hotel scheduled to open in summer 2028.
The Dorset House project forms part of a wider programme of office-to-hotel conversions in Central London. Other sites secured this year include 35 Red Lion Square in WC1, a former headquarters building being converted into a 150-bedroom hub by Premier Inn, and Phoenix House in SW8, an 80,000 sq ft former office acquired from Lambeth Council under a leasehold arrangement.
Whitbread has also acquired Victory House on Kingsway in WC2, a 45,000 sq ft office building earmarked for a 200-bedroom hub by Premier Inn, subject to planning consent.
Together, the four acquisitions represent more than £100m of direct investment. All of the new hotels are planned to operate using electricity generated from renewable sources, in line with Whitbread’s sustainability strategy.
London accounts for around 18% of Whitbread’s approximately 86,000-bedroom estate across the UK and Ireland, with the company targeting long-term expansion to about 125,000 rooms.
Jonathan Langdon, senior acquisition manager at Whitbread, said: “Achieving planning permission at Dorset House rounds off an especially active period for Whitbread’s Central London team in 2025, and we are moving quickly to progress our pipeline hotels into construction and onto trading as soon as possible.”
