Bob the Builder helps lay last brick at new Butlins hotel in Bognor

Everyone's favourite builder interrupted his performances at Butlins to take part in the traditional topping-out ceremony of the new tourist attraction at its resort.

He was joined by Butlins managing director, Richard Bates, and Phil Durigan, the managing director of hotel constructor Keir Southern, on top of the six-storey hotel.

Mr Bates laid the last brick of the new hotel and was presented with a silver trowel by Mr Durigan as a keepsake to mark the symbolic end of the building of the structure.

The Ocean Hotel is set to open this August and will boast a spa as well as 200 bedrooms where a total of 720 guests can stay.

The hotel will contain 30 double suites and 170 family rooms on the five floors above its upper and lower ground floor.

Full details of the hotel's facilities have yet to be revealed. But a press launch is being held in London tonight, January 22, to provide the first national publicity for the visitor attraction.

The hotel is being seen as a major part of the regeneration of Bognor. Butlins' parent company, Bourne Leisure, intends to demolish 256 chalets once the hotel is opened. The chalets are remnants of the holiday camp's opening in 1960.

If the Ocean Hotel is as successful as the booming 160-room Shoreline Hotel, since its opening in August, 2005, Bourne Leisure intends to remove all the 1,272 chalets on the site within five years.

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