Leisure and pub operators JD Wetherspoon are proposing to create 20 new jobs in a town centre with a £2.6million development.

The company has been searching for a suitable site for sometime in Felixstowe and has now bought the old Central Surgery premises.

The GP practice in Hamilton Road has been empty and boarded up since the surgery moved to the new Grove Medical Centre on the edge of the town a few months ago.

The surgery had been described by health chiefs as one of the worst buildings in Suffolk, cramped and leaking, with a desperate need to replace it with modern and larger facilities for the growing practice and its increasing workload.

JD Wetherspoon bought the site, the gateway to the town centre and opposite the Orwell Hotel, for around £375,000 and has now submitted proposals to Suffolk Coastal council to demolish the surgery buildings and replace them with a two-storey pub.

Eating and drinking and will take place on the ground floor while the toilets and back of house facilities would be upstairs. There would be no car parking.

The company says the development will create ten full-time and ten part-time jobs.

It said the design of the building has been very carefully managed to make the best use of the 17,653sq ft site and to provide the smallest building needed for the throughput of clientele expected.

It said: “The proposal presents an opportunity to bring a viable, sustainable use to this currently under-used building.

“The contribution this site makes to the quality of the area can therefore be considerably enhanced by this redevelopment.”

The company wil be applying for opening times of 7am to 12.30am for Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Sundays, and 7am to 1.30am on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and 24-hour opening on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

It has not held any pre-consultation with the public because it believes the pub “will not in any way adversely impact on neighbouring properties or local environment” and believes it could help to attract further investment to the resort.