PROPOSALS to renovate one of the town centre's derelict office buildings have been lodged.

An application has been submitted to Swindon Council to turn Princes House in Princes Street into an 85-bed hotel, 27 apartments, and 50 beds for the Salvation Army.

And the applicant is a London company called Kailash Estates Limited.

Both the Salvation Army and the New Swindon Company, which watches any town centre developments with interest, were not aware of the planning application.

The Salvation Army had previously put in a bid for Princes House, pictured above, because the homeless hostel run by the Christian group at Davis House needs to be relocated.

Its bid of £2.1m was beaten by another company whose bid was in the region of £3m.

The Salvation Army is currently appealing for people in Swindon to come up with ideas for where they could move after its Princes House plans failed.

The hostel, in Turl Street, has received funding from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to enable the move.

But this cash comes with a time limit and so must be spent soon before it expires. A spokesman for the Salvation Army said: "It could be a hotel chain that has put in the application. I think they are just testing the water to see what kind of response this application gets.

"Obviously, we would be happy to enter into talks with them about the 50 Salvation Army places that are on the application.

"But until we have a meeting with them, we are a bit in the dark as to exactly what the situation is.

"Davis House has 121 bedrooms so 50 beds would only be part of what we need. But we would welcome any help."

Ideally the charity needs to find a new home, which is in the town centre so that its residents have easy access to the facilities on offer.

It has been at Davis House since 1981 and has said in the past that the site is too old and not cost effective to redevelop.

The area around Princes Street has also been earmarked by the New Swindon Company as part of the town centre redevelopment plans.

Rosemary Wells, of the NSC, said: "Obviously any application like this will be of great interest to us especially one of such mixed use.

"We will be studying the plans in detail to see how they could benefit the redevelopment." Kailash was unavailable for comment.