More than £500,000 will be spent demolishing the fire-ravaged section of the Royal Albion Hotel, on Brighton seafront, and making the site safe, the council said today (Wednesday 2 August).
Brighton and Hove City Council took charge of the site once the fire was out because it was “too risky” to leave the work to the owner Britannia Hotels, according to an official report.
The report to senior councillors said: “The need to protect public safety and act immediately means the council had to use its powers under the Building Act 1984.
“The option of not using those powers and hoping the hotel owners moved quickly enough to commission the demolition was considered too risky.”
The report said that the council called in the expert structural engineering firm Hemsley Orrell Partnership (HOP), which is based in Hove, and Dorton Demolition, from Burgess Hill.
It added: “Both contractors have a record of delivering with the council and have dealt with demolition following fires.”
The council called a meeting on Monday 17 July – two days after the fire started. It told Britannia that it would use its power to make dangerous buildings safe under section 78 of the Building Act.
The report said: “It was explained to the representative of Britannia Hotels that under this act the local authority would undertake the demolition and clearance works as required to make the building safe and all cost incurred would be charged to the hotel owners.
“This was acknowledged by the hotel owner’s representative on site and was followed up in writing to the building owners.
“Dorton is charging the nationally recognised day rates for demolition as set out by the National Federation of Demolition Contractors.
“During the first week on site, the scale of the demolition required became evident and the total cost for all the works until handover stage are likely to exceed £500,000.
“Given the potential cost and the significance of the event and its impact on the city, it was considered that this major incident has corporate financial and possibly policy implications.
“All work that has been commissioned is the minimum necessary to ensure public safety but being mindful of the need also to protect as much as possible of the fabric and features of the listed building.
“The hotel structure has been collapsing inside the exclusion zone and the council has been taking all steps required to prevent debris landing on surrounding buildings and the A259.”
The report said: “Under section 78 of the building Act 1984, any local authority is entitled to take remedial steps in relation to a dangerous building.
“There is no definition of dangerous. In all the circumstances, officers believe that this would be a dangerous building.
“There is ongoing risk to adjoining buildings, passers-by and to the highway. It is only the fact that the area is cordoned off that, at this time, reduces risk to people. Risk to property and highways remain.
“The council was legally entitled to commission demolition and other works. Section 78 also provides that any expenses reasonably incurred in carrying out the works under the section may be recovered from the owner of the property.”
The report to the council’s Strategy, Finance and City Regeneration Committee said that the council had brought in technical experts from construction management company MGAC, an international firm with offices in Brighton and Hove.
MGAC was “commissioned to advise on cost analysis and on the type and scope of the contracts required”.
The report to councillors said: “The council has been moving quickly to get Dorton and HOP under formal written contract, again covering just the minimum works necessary for public safety.
“Once the building has been made safe through demolition, propping and site hoarding, the exclusion zone around the hotel will be reduced to the minimum size possible and the site will be handed back to Britannia Hotels.
“This would be at the appropriate time once all necessary steps under section 78 have been completed.
“Officers are already actively seeking repayment of all costs incurred from Britannia Hotels – not just costs of the contracts set out in this report but also technical support and officer time.
“The long-term future of the site will involve applications for planning and listed building consent and the council will encourage the hotel owners to consult widely with the community as part of the preparation of new plans.
“Steps have been taken to preserve salvaged heritage elements of the building, ensuring they can be reused. As well has having a heritage benefit, this also reduces embodied carbon of replacement parts.”
Eight flats in the Youth Hotels Association (YHA) building and nine flats in Lace House next door had to be evacuated over the weekend of the fire.
The report said: “These residents are still out of their homes and they have been facing a very difficult time.
“The council set up a route through to our in-house ‘community hub’ where residents can receive updates if they make themselves known to our switchboard staff.
“So far officers have made contact with residents from seven of the eight YHA flats and three of the nine from Lace House.
“Technical advice indicates that when the burned out top floor of the north elevation of the hotel is cleared during August, residents can move back into their homes.
“All of the factors set out in this report add up to make for what was an extremely challenging and dynamic situation which means that decisions have had to be taken on the ground to prioritise public safety on our seafront.
“Only the very minimum works required are being undertaken and all steps will be taken to protect the public purse and minimise expenditure at risk.
“The use of officer urgency powers in this case primarily concerns public safety but the intention is clearly for all costs to be recovered through Britannia Hotels and its insurers.
“Provided this proves to be the case and all costs are recovered, the main impact for the council is therefore a cashflow consideration.
“The council’s cash balances are normally very substantial – many millions – but they are often invested in short and medium-term investments. However, the council does have sufficient cash balances to manage expenses of this order.
“The key potential loss to the council, assuming ultimate recovery of all expenses, is the interest on cash balances forgone.
“In the current higher interest rate environment, the council would forgo interest of approximately £2,000 to £4,000 for each month it takes to recover monies from the insurer but the council will request interim payments to mitigate this.
“Although unlikely, the possibility of non-recovery must also be considered and this would require the council to identify one-off resources or capital financing in order to provide for any unrecovered sums.”
The report also addressed fears about asbestos risks, saying: “There was concern raised at the time of the fire about possible asbestos in the building.
“Asbestos was only known to be in the textured ceiling coatings used in the building. Asbestos is a danger when fibres become airborne and are breathed in.
“The great majority of asbestos fibres are held tightly within the asbestos containing material and not readily released into the air during a fire.
“Long-term health effects from asbestos generally occur in those who have been directly exposed by inhaling large quantities of asbestos fibres over a long period of time, such as in an occupational setting.”
The report asks councillors to note the steps already taken and to authorise officials to enter into contracts, complete the demolition work and make sure that the building is safe.
It asks for formal permission to recover the cost of the work and “to take all other steps necessary or incidental to securing the safety of the public and the building”.
The council’s Strategy, Finance and City Regeneration Committee is due to meet at Hove Town Hall at 2pm on Friday (4 August).
Let us hope that the replacement building does not resemble the one that looks like a greenhouse and is always changing its nane in front of Batholowmew Square.
I hope the redevelopment will include a wider re-visioning of Poll Valley.
Using it as a ‘bus-stop’ is a complete waste of space..
It needs to be a proper public space and this tragedy should be the start of that process.
I do hope that the Council will be sending Brittannia Hotels an invoice.
As long as somebody remembers to do so they are entitled to reclaim it.
Yes me to
When will there be a safety report as some of the online reviews are shocking.
When will the Fire Report be published?
If arson can’t be ruled out, there may not be any insurance.
Who pays then?
Presumably there will also be a requirement to reconstruct the West End like-for-like since it was a Grade II* Listed Regency building.
That part was only Grade II listed. The rest was II*.
Someone should be in court over this debacle. Negligence at its maximum here
Britannia Hotels won’t want to know about a rebuild. Bet they’ll be selling the site on as there is no money to made from a part demolished building. Student accommodation anyone?
What a very tragic event for everyone involved – a sad day for our City in numerous ways -another part of our historic Regency architecture destroyed 😢 hope the ongoing investigation and outcome will serve as a huge learning curve and immense thought goes into future planning and development for this site .
Britannia hotels have been voted the worst hotel for many years running so don’t expect a new hotel any time soon as the eccentric owner loathes to spend any money whatsoever on his hotels.
Yes my thought on arson have the council had the fire report that states how the fire started.If was not accidentally then who will responsible for the recovery of monies would have thought the i360 was a lesson of loans never recovered and council cut backs that are hurting the community after all the money is everone who pays council tax.
The two aren’t the same.
If necessary the council can go to court and have a charge put on the hotels land registry entry so they have first call should it be sold.
They also have other legal remedies..
The cause of the fire is irrelevant when it comes down to recovering the demolition costs from the hotels owners.
On perusing the Council’s full report it’s impressive to be able to note the great thoroughness of the B&H News article above.
Thus, and taking a cue from Commenter DDave+Eve above, it’s worrying to find not a word to say that our Council has already applied to HM Land Registry to place a ‘Caution’ on the site’s Title Register, so that no transfer of the land, or of any long lease on it and/or the buildings, can be registered without the formal consent of our City Council.
More worrying still is that the Financial and Legal sections of the report have been signed-off by two director-level officers involved in the flawed drafting of the contract with Coin Co Intl for the collection of cash from the parking meters, and other Council cash locations, and for the mis-management of the contract thereafter – whereby over £3million of our money was ‘lost’!
And the only pathetic response from our Council’s senior officers was hand-wringing to the effect that: ‘Yes, it’s deeply regrettable, but Coin Co have gone into liquidation, and there’s nothing that can be done!’.
And with the contract apparently requiring Coin Co to credit the cash to our Council’s bank account, within 2 working days of it having been collected from us, how was an unbanked backlog of around 30 days-worth of our money ever allowed by senior council officers (and why didn’t we have a Plan B, to call in another cash collector on the third day that Coin Co had failed to bank our money)?
As to “flawed”: yes, apparently other public bodies using Coin Co had constructed their contracts so that, at all times, the money remained their inalienable property. With the result that failures to bank that collected cash amounted to ‘Theft’ by Coin Co, with such a crime being aggravated by Coin Co having committed it whilst being in a position of trust!
Which, upon convictions for theft, would have permitted those public bodies to apply, under the Proceeds of Crime Act, for seizure of the three valuable Sussex mansions owned by Coin Co’s directors, and possibly a Brighton property as well!
Which incompetence/impotence by our Town Hall officers also draws the mind back to the loss of our half-share in Shoreham Airport; the i360 which was known to be financially unviable from at least 2012; many financial scandals at CityClean, including the inexcusable attempt to compete against established commercial providers, to offer a municipal Trade Waste collection service to local businesses; and, not yet fully uncovered but probably a greater loss to taxpayers than the i360, the leasing-out of 499 units of council housing to an entity funded by Banco Santander, whereby almost every provision and condition in the report agreed to by a Green majority at a special Policy and Resources Cttee meeting in September 2011, was later ignored or overridden by Town Hall officers!
And repercussions for such Dereliction of Duty lapses? Mostly moderate promotions upwards!
Which leaves a major question: will the new Labour Councillors, after 26 years of most Councillors, of most Parties, meekly letting the (unelected!) Town Hall officers rule us, rather than serve us, actually get down to the nitty-gritty of creating a competent, efficient, and frugal municipality? Which is all that most City taxpayers want to see, surely?
In passsing it’s sometimes surprising what peripheral information can emerge from reports addressing other issues. Such as the revelation above that the YHA youth hostel contains residential flats. One could understand a couple of staff flats – but more than that reduces the amount of affordable tourist accommodation?
Yes, our City needs residential housing too (and all the more so with our Council’s meek, but expensive, acceptance of rough sleepers from elsewhere), but absolutely not by denying low-ish income visitors a place to stay in this prime tourist location, surely?
Also, repurposing visitor accommodation to permanent residential occupation looks like it’d need a Change-of-Use Planning Application? But as the Council apparently is or was the Freeholder of the premises, and perhaps has leased the flats to house previously homelesss people, perhaps it writes its own rules?
Lastly, with hopefully a further article to come from B&H News, there’s a second item on the Agenda for Friday, about the Royal Pavilion Gardens.
!AnrWhilst it contains a number of highly questionable issues a disappointing revelation is that our Council has walked away from the (currently closed) Princes Place public toilets, by leasing them out to the (unaccountable!) Royal Pavilion Trust! And worse still City taxpayers will be giving money to the Trust to renovate the toilets, whereas the motivation for ‘privatising’ the City’s museums and RP to an unaccountable body was that such a Trust could raise more capital for works than the Council could. An assertion which seems counter-intuitive and which has not really been unequivocally substantiated, or has it?
And we now see the exposure of a long-running spin campaign, whereby at every opportunity the reference has been to the ‘RP Gardens Toilets’. They have never been,part of the RP Estate (until now), so more deceit from our disingenuous Council, sadly!
Also, for anyone not recognising it, and on a year-round basis, these Princes Place toilets are the very most important public facilities we have, and they should continur to be operated by our Council, ideally open 24/7, to become the pride of our City, which visitors return home to praise us to the skies!
And, to close by trying to put a canard to bed: in its At Risk Register Historic England does not say that the Gardens have become damaged. It says that they are at RISK of becoming so if (more?) ‘inappropriate development’ was to be permitted. Presumably they mean the semi-underground Power Centre for the Dome, and possibly new outdoor cafe facilities for the theatres?
We, the people of Brighton, need to remember that the Pavilion Estate was bought by Brighton Corporation for our simple benefit – not specifically to become a showpiece for the skills of Nash as a landscape architect!
In any case the defining model of those skills is to be found in Regents Park, London, where they complement his renowned Regency Terraces. That’s what people come from around the world to see, so we need to beware of ‘luvvies’ wasting our money by trying to create a second-class vanity version of the Regents Park Gardens, whilst possibly reducing our simple enjoyment of our Pavilion Gardens, excellent as they aiready are (if properly maintained and policed), surely?
I’m glad someone remembers the debacle that was Coin Co.
Excellent, informative inteigent to the point. There are some very qustionable people involved in very questionable contracts (deals) for brighton public municipal services .
Why is the council paying for this service of demolition, so really the tax payer. Yes, send fire services when needed etc but then there should be due process that the owner foots the bill for anything else. They will after all definitely be claiming against thier insurance!
I totally agree with everything that has been said
Our council deserves our thanks for acting swiftly and appropriately to reduce the risk to the public and our transport infrastructure by dealing with this unsafe building.
A good time to do something about The Poole Valley Coach Station, whilst they’re at it.
All these vanity projects and cycle lanes, yet we don’t encourage people to use coach travel, we don’t really want to welcome tourists to Brighton & Hove. Welcome to “Poole Valley” the face of Brighton and Hove!
I couldn’t agree more Pool Valley is a disgrace to what it used to be when it had toilets and a waiting room with a snack bar . What tourists must think of or on first sight getting off the coach beggars belief . Council wastes so much money on things the public down want or need but we need a coach station and we need a proper one looking the pride of Brighton
In my opinion after all this fire ,the hotel shouldn’t be rebuild because the leaving building could be on the danger again if fire happens again.