A historic arcade on Hastings seafront is set to be transformed into a food hall, creating up to 45 jobs.

Hastings Borough Council has given the green light for the site at 9-11 Pelham Arcade by St Mary-in-the-Castle to be developed.

The plans for the three empty units include a new food hall with seven restaurant booths.

Applicants behind the proposals said the booths will serve Indian, Italian, Turkish, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese and Korean food.

placeholder image — St Mary in the Castle, Hastings.

Pelham Arcade was built between 1823 and 1825 by Joseph Kay, at 1-12 Pelham Crescent in Hastings. It is believed to be one of the UK's oldest shopping arcades.

In a statement on behalf of the applicants, which was submitted to council planners, Baker Architectural Ltd said: “9-11 Pelham Arcade is divided into three units and instead of opening three different restaurants, the plan that we envision is having six to seven restaurant booths in our premises.

“The purpose of this to attract as many customers as we can as everyone has different tastes and preferences towards what food they like and by providing a variety of food, we are confident that our market place can become one of the most busiest places in Hastings which in turn generates more revenue.

“After a thorough market research, we have studied what cuisines are most sought after and we have come to the conclusion the booths we make will provide

Indian, Italian, Turkish, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese and Korean cuisine.

“The strategy with having multiple booths is so we can help our local businesses, who cannot afford to open their own restaurant but are still passionate to provide great food to the customer, by giving them one of the booths on lease.

“This enables them to have a lower cost of running and make good profits in return and it helps us by providing a diverse selections of foods, as one company cannot specialise in everything.

“Another decision we have made is we will only be providing the most popular and quick to make dishes for each of the cuisines to avoid long waiting times for customers and keep our customers happy.

“Hastings is a historic place which attracts a lot of tourists and we value their time as they want to spend majority of their time visiting historic attractions that is why we will focus on providing amazing and quick service which will also be appreciated by the local community.”

The opening times of the food hall will be from 10am to 12am, seven days a week, applicants said.

The statement added: “Each booth will create at least five to six jobs in two shifts as there will be morning shifts and evening shifts. So there will be 35 to 45 jobs created because of our market place.

“We will also be hiring a cleaning crew and be present there to manage and provide great customer service.”