PLANNING chiefs are due to make a key decision next week on a multi-million-pound proposal to redevelop part of the Hampshire coastline.

A developer is seeking consent to axe the centrepiece of its plan to transform the former Webbs chicken factory site at Bridge Road, Lymington.

Paxton Holdings wants to delete a 100-bed hotel from the scheme and build a care home instead.

However members of the New Forest District Council's Planning and Development Control Committee will be urged to reject the application when they meet next Wednesday.

A report to councillors says a care home on the waterfront site would breach local planning policies and also cites the risk of flooding.

Lymington and Pennington Town Council has also objected to the revised scheme, saying a hotel would boost the local economy by encouraging tourism.

A town council spokesman said: "A care home would increase demand on local medical services that are already under strain.

"There is no evidence that more care homes are needed in the locality whereas the New Forest National Park Authority anticipates an increase in visitors, which would support the hotel use."

Other objectors include the Lymington Society.

However, the district council has received a letter from Paxton's agent, who claims the proposed development would generate 50 jobs whereas the hotel would create only 41 new posts.

The Webbs factory closed five years ago with the loss of 500 jobs.

Plans to build a hotel, 308 homes and a restaurant on the site, plus a riverside walkway and a pedestrian bridge over the adjoining railway line, were approved by the district council in March last year.

The scheme cleared its final hurdle three months later when Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott rubber-stamped the proposal. A Paxton spokesman said the seven-acre site would be protected by flood defences.