ANOTHER new budget hotel could soon open on the edge of York, as planning documents reveal a chain is eyeing a site in the city.

Travelodge could be on track to open its fifth branch in York, as a planning application lodged with City of York Council shows it wants to build a new 80 bedroom hotel, with a bar and restaurant, next to the Pear Tree Farm pub at Monks Cross.

If it goes ahead, it will follow the hotel currently being built on Layerthorpe to become the fifth Travelodge in York.

However, it is less than two miles from the Hopgrove roundabout, where another plan has been put forward for a service station with a 50 bedroom hotel, petrol station, and a restaurant/ cafe.

Those plans - proposed by Enita Europe - were first launched more than four years ago but were criticised by planners and then withdrawn in July 2014, before being resurrected last month.

The planning application says a new service station is needed on that stretch of the A64, “a key transport route in the North of England”. There is currently a 40 mile gap between service stations on the A64, the developers add, and no other suitable sites.

Huntington Parish Council. however, has already objected saying the Hopgrove plan does not meet with national planning rules because the service station is not accessed from the trunk road, and because it would result in noise, disturbance and overlooking for people who live nearby.

Travelodge’s plans would put a new hotel and car park on the plot between the Pear Tree Farm and McDonald’s, but would still leave a square of land on the plot free for future development.

A design and access statement for the planning applications says that with the retail parks and park and ride sites nearby, the new hotel would be easily accessible by public transport.

A “sequential test” also argues the Monks Cross site is in the only viable site for a new hotel of its kind in the city at the moment. Other sites, including Travelodge’s new hotel at Layerthorpe, are unavailable because they have already been built on; or are in areas with long term problems to solve like Castle Piccadilly or York Central.