Owners of an Italian restaurant in the city's Jewellery Quarter are planning to almost double its capacity after being forced to turn away customers due to a lack of space.

Pasta di Piazza, based next to St Paul's Square, has lodged new plans to convert a three-bedroom apartment above the restaurant into seating, storage and toilets.

It can currently house around 100 guests in the building, which is a former factory dating back to the 1870s, but the renovation is expected to add a further 80 covers and create up to five new jobs.

Pasta di Piazza is also seeking planning permission to extend the kitchen on the first floor and install a new staircase to be the main circulation between the basement and first floor.

The restaurant has been trading since 1995 but owner Roni Ferro told the Post this was the first major redevelopment the company had carried out since launching.

"We have done some renovation work over the years but nothing to this scale," he said.

"We do get extremely busy, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights, and find we are turning people away because we don't have the space so we definitely need this extension.

"We've no idea of the cost of the project at the moment because we're just focussing on getting the planning permission in place.

"It's hard to put any dates on it until we receive that permission but we hope to start the redevelopment next year and have it ready for Christmas 2015."