A FORMER Wellington pub could be set to become a community café with offices and a three-bedroom residential dwelling.

If planning permission is given The Dolphin Inn, Waterloo Road, Wellington, will become a community space with a café on the ground floor and office space on the first floor.

Proposals show a residential conversion of the western half of the building, converting an existing two-bedroom flat into a three-bedroom house by incorporating "use of the ground floor".

The house would be "spread over three floors" and would have a separate entrance to the front, off Waterloo Road, and to the rear of the building from the dedicated parking.

The application, submitted by Greenslade Taylor Hunt on behalf of Sleeps12.com Limited, suggests the community space could be used as a potential youth club, adding that "discussions with Wellington Town Council have shaped this aspect of the proposals".

The application states: "The Dolphin Inn is a distinctive feature of the town, famed for its colourful murals. The pub closed in January 2020 and has been vacant ever since.

"The site comprises the main public house building providing three floors of accommodation to the front of the site, with later modern single-storey additions, a detached two-storey garage building and part of the former pub garden which is now overgrown and derelict."

It added: "The proposed use of a café/community space at ground floor level and offices at first-floor level provide an opportunity for the property to function as a facility that the local community can benefit from and significantly tidy up the site which has become an eyesore."

The first-floor office space would be used by the applicants, a local travel agent Sleeps 12.