A ‘beautiful” and “fantastic” high end luxury hotel, spa, and fine dining restaurant nestled in the Surrey countryside has been approved.

Gatton Manor and Country Club will be transformed as part of a £41million project to demolish the closed hotel and failing golf course and replace it with 81 guest rooms, two restaurants, a spa with indoor and wild swimming pools, gym, treatment and relaxation areas.

The 22 hectare site near Ockley is expected to create 290 construction jobs during the two-year project and then 145 long-term positions once up and running.

The proposal would create destination accommodation in Mole Valley and bring significant investment into the rural economy – the council’s April development committee heard.

Officers told the meeting: “It is such a beautiful site, it is such a large site, it has got woodland, open areas, it is really a lovely, lovely, rural area and because of its size and the amount of landscape it is more than capable of absorbing this amount of development.”

As well as the new hotel, there will be new facilities available to the public, notably the fine dining restaurant and gym.

The developers also intend to install two tennis courts and three padel courts.

Up to 100 gym memberships will be made available to  residents living within 3km of the site at preferential rates.

The hotel and spa will be accessed from Standon Lane, which links the A29 Stane Street with Horsham Road.

The current hotel closed in 2022 and its adjoining 18-hole golf course had been set for closure regardless of whether planning permission was achieved.

The hotel and spa development would also support businesses further down the supply chain, officers told the meeting.

Residents had objected to the plans saying they would undermine the openness of the rural area and the impact to the road network was a major concern.

Developers said the loss of the golf course, though a shame, was impossible to avoid given it had been running at a loss for several years.

Councillor Roger Adams (Liberal Democrat: Bookham West) said: “With global warming and rising temperatures I suspect a lot of people seeking a holiday will no longer be heading to the Mediterranean but may well seek to have staycations, and where better to stay for a holiday than Surrey. 

“We’ve got beautiful country here and we do need developments such as this.

“It will provide employment and enhance the visitor schemes.”

Cllr Monica Weller (Liberal Democrat: Bookham West)  said: “It really is quite fantastic as far as I’m concerned.

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“A business like this has got to bring something really quite fantastic to our area and that is really to be welcomed.”