A NORTH Yorkshire country house has held on to its title of the Best UK Hotel outside of London for the third consecutive year.

Rudding Park Hotel, Spa and Golf, near Harrogate, retained its accolade in the TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice Awards 2015.

The awards are based on the reviews of visitors gathered on the travel guide website.

Peter Banks, managing director at Rudding Park said: "Winning this award for the third year running and maintaining our position in the top three ‘Best Hotels in the UK’ for nine consecutive years is a tremendous achievement.

"This third place was achieved with a 98.2 per cent guest satisfaction score, the highest amongst the top three hotels.

"We’ve had a fantastic start to the year, with the TripAdvisor award and last week we were voted the ‘Best Golf Hotel in the UK’ by LateRooms.com so I am extremely proud of every member of our team.

"Our desire to provide the very best for our guests means we have exciting plans to recapture Harrogate’s spa heritage by extending our existing spa with a £7 million development to open in December 2016."