A video has exposed the rotting insides of an abandoned hotel that a council has just rejected for a £12m upgrade.

The Belle Vue Royal Hotel on the Aberystwyth seafront has become the town's eyesore after it was ravaged by fire in 2018.

Boarded up, the venue has suffered multiple break-ins and arson attacks since it closed, and now sits rotting on the town’s most tourist-visited strip - the promenade.

Hope was on the horizon as the owner submitted a planning application to completely transform the husk into a five-star hotel charging £480 a night after a £12m redevelopment.

However Ceredigion County Council planning department rejected the plans, seemingly taking offence to the partially modernised front and (arguably needed) complete rebuild of the back of the building.

Hotel owner Vince Morgans appealed to the councillors to come and see the state of the hotel before making their decision; however, this has seemingly been done for them by urban decay videographer James Gillett, known as JG10 on TikTok, who this week published an exposé video showing the pigeon-infested building.

The video shows a reception area with caved-in ceilings, rubble and graffiti covering what could be a dining room, and fire-damaged walls.

It shows a reception littered with abandoned paperwork, a dusty bar still with beer taps, water pooling on the kitchen floor, which still has many stainless steel units, and a room full of at least six uninstalled bathtubs.

In response, residents have made it clear their views, pointing to other modern developments on the Prom including the Old College and Bandstand being approved when this was not, with one calling Cadw’s requirements often “not only impractical but prohibitively expensive”.

The application had already been rejected for Listed Building Consent for being “completely inappropriate” in December, due to the “unjustified” loss of “significant amounts of historic fabric”.