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The bulldozing of a large Hereford hotel ahead of its replacement with a Lidl supermarket is “a double-edged sword” for the city, its mayor has said.

Kevin Tillett, who is also a local county councillor, said he had previously attempted to give voice to those opposed to the plan locally, but “ultimately, is was a private sale between the owners and Lidl, and there was no grounds in planning law to refuse it”.

“We are where we are, and the building is coming down,” he said.

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“It’s a double-edged sword. There are local concerns, which I share, about the impact on traffic – time will tell if they are borne out.”

Another issue is that “this side of the river there is little hotel accommodation”, he added.

“Given there are a lot of small houses, the Three Counties was somewhere handy for guests to stay – as well as a venue for anniversaries and other events.”

On the other hand, “it will bring employment opportunities and cut-price grocery shopping to this side of the river”, Coun Tillett said.

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At the start of this week (November 11), demolition work was already well under way at the boarded-up site off the A465 Belmont Road, with what had been the reception area and external canopy as well as part of an outbuilding already cleared.

Large skips are currently being filled with rubble and other materials by the supermarket’s contractor Wye Valley Demolition, and being taken off-site.

Lidl has said demolition work will take until the end of January, by which time it intends to have a contractor lined up to build the new supermarket.

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Permission for the work was granted at a council meeting in April, with councillors split over the decision. A subsequent legal challenge against this proved unsuccessful.

The retailer then said in July it wanted to begin demolition “as early as possible” after having to send in bailiffs to remove a group of travellers who had broken into and set up camp in the hotel site the previous month.

The previous wire-mesh fencing around the hotel site was replaced by two-metre-high wooden hoardings coated in dark grey anti-climb paint, making the site largely invisible from the outside.