More than £7m to be spent on converting former bank in Hull into apartments

Hull City Council has put £550,000 of levelling up money into the conversion of the former Lloyds Bank, on the corner of George Street and Bond Street. The funding will contribute to the project worth £7.4m to convert it into 46 apartments.

Coun Paul Drake-Davis, the council’s regeneration and housing portfolio holder, said it showed the Levelling Up Fund was continuing to bring investment into the city. Plans for the conversion are set to see the building’s ground floor banking hall converted into 22 flats, with the upstairs converted from offices into 24 apartments.

Works include restoring the original clock face on the Bond Street side of the building and retaining the original features of the inside staircase. They also include internal partitions, decorations, installing a new lift, repairing features, putting in a sprinkler system and storage space and painting and cleaning the facade.

Artists impressions of the plans for the former bank, which dates from the 1970s, showed a glass-fronted, penthouse-style top floor. The rest of the building is set to feature a mix of studio apartments as well as one, two and three bedroom flats. Surrenden Invest, the property consultants dealing with it, have been marketing the apartments as buy to lets, with many already sold.

An advert for one listing on Rightmove posted last year said the development would deliver a new era of lifestyle apartments to Hull’s rental market. Works were set to begin last May and take around a year to complete but they remain ongoing.

Coun Drake-Davis said the project was excellent.

The portfolio holder said: “This will bring back into use a large, vacant building, whilst also providing new city centre residential opportunities. The Levelling Up Fund continues to contribute to Hull, bringing in private investment to help regenerate our city centre.”

The Government awarded £19.5m in levelling up funding to the council in 2021 to help regenerate the city centre and bring vacant buildings back into use.