A HEREFORD hotel’s ambitious refurbishment project has led to a boost in full-time jobs available in the city centre.

Bosses at the Grade II-listed Green Dragon Hotel, in Broad Street, have been adding to the workforce during the refurbishment which started last year.

Managing director Julian Vaughan has been one of the project’s leaders after the hotel was bought by a consortium of primarily county investors.

“We inherited a business with about 24 roles in it, full-time,” said Mr Vaughan, who has spent much of his life in the industry.

“We’re now up to a mixture of full-time and variable roles, 36 full-time roles and a number of growing variable roles which are equally as important.

“With the right people we’ll supply long-term careers that weren’t in place before. In the last three months, we’ve put 10 full-time roles back into the centre of Hereford.

“There’s more to fill hence why we’re looking for more talent to join the business.

“In full-time roles there’s still four or five across the different departments, and variable-wise, with Christmas coming up, anything up to 10 or more.”

Changes at the hotel include twice as many kitchen staff and a more effective structure being put into place.

Seventy-six bedrooms have been refurbished and five function spaces are open, including a cocktail bar.

Mr Vaughan added: “We’re on time and on budget, we started a little bit later but we’ll finish a little bit earlier. You can imagine in a property like this there’s a lot of work to do.

“There’s still bits that would be nice to have and things that we would have liked to have done.

“What we think we’ve done is very cleverly put together a refurbishment that allows the building to be brought up to 21st century standard.”