A HIGH-END hotel company eyeing York is changing its plans for a city centre building.

Malmaison has already signed a deal to move into Yorkshire House, the old Aviva office on Rougier Street, once it is converted by developers.

The building's current owners Yorkshire Ventures have planning permission to transform the seven-storey former office building into a 124 bed hotel with 33 services apartments, but now new plans have emerged.

A fresh planning application, lodged in late May, shows the company has scaled down its plans and now wants to create a 150 bedroomed hotel with meeting rooms, but none of the planned apartments. Proposals for a large six-storey side extension - which would have gone in the gap between Yorkshire House and the Grand Hotel, have disappeared. Instead, the new plans include just a single storey extension for that space, and the rooftop extension - something that was included in the previous plans but withdrawn before they were approved.

The boutique hotel chain Malmaison is still on board, but the new plans include a sky bar to be housed in a roof top extension on top of the current building.

Yorkshire Ventures chairman Richard Jackson said: “We have submitted a revised planning application for the redevelopment of Yorkshire House, which reflects Malmaison’s operational requirements.

“The application now includes meeting rooms, further hotel bedrooms and a new sky bar, instead of serviced apartments.”

The Malmaison plans caused controversy when they first emerged, sparking rows over how the loss of office space would hit the city jobs market. Economic bosses at the city council said York needed space for companies like Aviva which bring in high-skilled and well-paid jobs, not more low-wage hospitality jobs.

Although a high-end hotel brand would be good for the city’s tourist trade, allowing Yorkshire House to be converted to would damage efforts to bring higher value jobs and increased wages to York, they warned.

However the developers said Yorkshire House did not meet modern office standards and upgrading it would not be viable. They also pointed out that even before the hotel proposals were made, the building had approval to be converted into 66 flats meaning the principal of losing the office space was established.