The Premier Inn at Putney Bridge is closing permanently on 12 June.
The closure comes on the same day parent company Whitbread announced it is cutting 3,800 jobs across the UK and Ireland, scrapping all 197 of its remaining branded restaurants, and selling £1.5 billion of freehold properties as part of a major five-year overhaul.
It’s unclear whether the Putney Bridge closure is a direct consequence of that announcement or a separate decision from a review of the company’s estate.
The hotel has operated on the south bank of Putney Bridge for more than two decades. It has 74 rooms and a riverside location, exactly the kind of freehold asset Whitbread has said it plans to sell.
There have been rumours for some time that it intends to get rid of the property which has been fuelled by an obvious lack of external maintenance – especially its main sign – even if the rooms inside have remained updated.
Chief executive Dominic Paul said the plan would transform Whitbread into “a higher-margin, higher-returning pure-play hotel business.” The restructuring follows sharp increases in business rates and National Insurance, as well as pressure from activist investor Corvex Management, and a rise in energy costs linked to tensions in the Middle East.
Bookings for the Putney Bridge site cut off abruptly on Monday 12 June.
A second Premier Inn project, a few minutes away
More concerningly, on the Putney side of the bridge, a separate project bearing the same brand has gone quiet.
The Hub by Premier Inn under construction at 31–43 Putney High Street on the corner of the High Street and Putney Bridge Road. It is being built by developer Mosser Limited, not Whitbread, and is planned to open around 2028 with approximately 200 rooms.
But the construction site had gone quiet for over a month. An office on the site has been removed, there has been no noise or obvious demolition activity and the “pit lane” approved back in February that would see lorries pull up and take away rubble from the demolition of the existing buildings has yet to be built.
Workers were present on Thursday, but general activity has stalled. Construction had resumed in March after a quieter spell, with a foreman citing inspections and lorry access issues. The planning approval for the development came with a two-year pavement closure on Putney High Street and an unresolved question about how the hotel would receive deliveries.
Two Premier Inn-branded projects sit within a few minutes of Putney Bridge. One is closing with short notice to staff and redundancies expected. The other is stalled on the day Whitbread announced the biggest reset in its modern history. The connection between them is branding, not ownership, but the coincidence is hard to ignore.
