PLANS to turn a popular Southampton hotel into student flats have been withdrawn.

Last year Galliard Homes announce proposals to convert the Highfield House Hotel into a 144-bed student complex and a cinema.

But one year later the company has decided to shelve its proposals, meaning the hotel will continue to operate as normal.

The news comes as developer Orchard Homes prepares plans for a 349-flat student halls of residence on the former Portswood Bus Depot site, next to the Sainsbury's supermarket.

An exhibition of the plans will ironically be held at the Highfield House Hotel from 4-8pm on July 6.

Hotels have been run on the site since 1945, previously trading as the Cotswold Hotel, the Moat House Hotel and the County Hotel.

Before that, the site had been the home of well-known city music shop owner Henry Price Hodges, who had lived there until he died on the Titanic in 1912.

Galliard has owned the hotel site since 2006 and its proposals for the hotel site included creating 144-self contained student rooms as well as a cinema and a gym.

The Ceno bar and restaurant at the site would have been retained in its current form and the owners had said the 17 full-time staff employed at the hotel would have been offered positions at the new development.

It had been expected that a planning application would be handed in during the autumn but that did not materialise and now the plans have been axed.

A spokesman for Galliard declined to comment but did confirm that the plans had been withdrawn.

Local residents and politicians have welcomed the news, with Jerry Gillen from the Highfield Residents Association saying: "We're absolutely delighted that Galliard have withdrawn their plans and we like to think we may have had some influence on that in two ways.

"Firstly we knew the hotel was trading profitably with a 90 per cent occupancy rate.

"And the overriding thing we convinced them of was there is now so much purpose-built student accommodation being built both by the university and private developers, that by the time they had demolished it they would have missed the boat."

Portswood councillor Matthew Claisse was also pleased at the news, saying: "I welcome the news and the reason is because the hotel is a popular destination for people who visit the area.

"There is the hotel at Chilworth but the area isn't particularly well served with hotels and particularly with the university having visitors all of the time.

"If you take that away it's a facility that the community has lost so I am pleased for that reason because it's a well-used hotel and I don't think there's ever been a question mark over its viability."