FAST food firm McDonald’s has put forward proposals to open its second restaurant in Christchurch.

The chain is seeking permission to demolish the Pizza Hut at Christchurch Retail Park to make way for its new outlet and a drive-thru.

St James Place Trust, which has owned the retail park since 2007, has submitted a planning application to BCP Council which would allow McDonald’s to take over the plot.

The trust fund bought the Barrack Road site for about £34 million and in recent months has put forward several schemes to redevelop it to accommodate new businesses.

In April, plans for Home Bargains to expand into the neighbouring Harveys furniture shop was submitted while permission has already been granted for Homebase to downsize to allow Lidl to move in.

The budget supermarket chain is expected to open its new store in the coming months.

The trust has now applied to the council for permission to demolish the Pizza Hut building on the site to make way for a new McDonald’s.

It would be the second in Christchurch, alongside the outlet in Somerford Road.

If approved, the new restaurant would be about 50 per cent larger than the existing building and would have a drive-thru at the expense of 26 parking spaces.

A series of technical assessments have been lodged as part of the application justifying the redevelopment as being acceptable.

A transport statement by TTP Consulting says the change could result in as much as 100 extra vehicles entering the retail park each hour at peak times but says “a proportion” of these would be diversions from other restaurants.

It adds that the car park was only half full at its busiest, making the reduction in parking spaces acceptable.

And a report by consultancy CDM Partnership says McDonald’s is “intent to adopt a best practice approach to avoiding the causation of nuisance”.

“In recognition of the potentially sensitive nature of the proposed restaurant location in relation to the nearby housing, it is proposed to provide odour control measures exceeding the assessment conclusions in order to provide a comfortable design margin over and above the minimum recommendations,” it adds.

A decision on the application will be made by council planning officers in the coming weeks.