Splashing out: Center Parcs to open £250m fifth centre

HOLIDAY firm Center Parcs is pressing ahead with plans to build its fifth UK resort in a move that will create 2,700 jobs.

It has secured £250 million of funding for the development, which will see 625 forest lodges, a 75-bed hotel, a swimming pool, a lake and other leisure facilities built near Woburn, Bedfordshire.

The centre, which will be open in spring 2014, will create 1,500 jobs, mainly for local people, while a further 1,200 people will be employed in the construction of the site.

It comes after the UK’s four biggest banks – Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland – agreed to a £150m construction loan, with the rest of the money being stumped up by the group’s private equity owner, Blackstone, following a £1 billion refinancing.

The group, which has sites in Cumbria, Nottinghamshire, Suffolk and Wiltshire, said the construction project would be “the largest of its type in Britain for many years”. The group originally identified the site in 2004 but the development sparked protests about its impact on the greenbelt.