A drive-thru Costa Coffee could be on its way to an out-of-town shopping complex.

Plans have been put forward for the chain to take on one of the few remaining undeveloped plots on the Eclipse Business Park in Maidstone, diagonally opposite the Marks and Spencer store.

The proposal is submitted by the site’s freehold owner, Gallagher Properties, which says it would create the equivalent of eight new full-time jobs.

If approved by Maidstone council, the vacant lot, which is currently just hard-standing, would be transformed into a coffee shop with some internal and outside seating, along with 28 standard parking spaces, two disabled spaces and a waiting space.

But the key element would be the drive-thru counter that would enable customers to collect their order and go, exiting using the existing access off Sittingbourne Road.

The site is currently just hard-standing.

The application acknowledges that coffee is already available at the adjacent Orida Hotel and within the cafes at both the Marks and Spencer and Next retail stores nearby, the latter of which is a Costa, but says the drive-thru would serve a different client base.

It would be open from 5am to 11pm every day, including Sunday.

Those businesses serve mainly their own existing customers, whereas Costa would cater for workers from the nearby office blocks at Horizon House and Eclipse House and for the passing trade, particularly with the site’s proximity to Junction 7 of the M20.

Costa is the UK’s largest coffee house chain with more than 2,700 cafes.

The firm already has more than 300 drive-thrus with an ambition of establishing 500 by 2025.

The Maidstone Costa application has been submitted jointly with one for the neighbouring plot, which Gallaghers wants to redevelop with four light industrial units, using a separate, new access off Sittingbourne Road.

The units would be of three sizes – two of 392 sq metres, one of 478 sq metres, and one of 598 sq metres – and each would have office space on a mezzanine floor.

The units, which would take up the 0.5-hectare plot, would have 37 standard parking spaces, plus four disabled places and four for deliveries.

In the borough council’s Local Plan, the sites are allocated for office development, so the application would be a deviation from that policy.

Gallaghers said it had marketed the land for office development repeatedly over the last 15 years, but there had been no interest for such a use since the 2008 economic crash.

The company says the borough council needs to revise its Local Plan because insisting on office development was preventing other employment uses from coming forward.

It doesn't have specific tenants for the four commercial units yet, but based on industry averages, it reckons they could give rise to 40 jobs.

The planning application can be viewed here.

Application number 23/503788 refers.

Should the application be approved, that would leave only one plot on the estate undeveloped.

Gallaghers said it would be submitting an application for the remaining site for a 6,967 sq metre self-storage facility, operated by Cinch Self Storage.

The plot already has its own access off Sittingbourne Road.

Of the three, it is the closest to the homes at Heath Wood Drive, but Gallaghers said that the nature of the self-storage business meant little traffic or noise to disturb neighbours.

The Cinch site is proposed to have 20 car parking spaces and two disabled spots.

Cinch already operates 15 self-storage units across the country, including in Sittingbourne and Gillingham.

A formal application for Maidstone is yet to be submitted.