Major decision over eyesore Torquay hotel is 'just depressing'

Plans to tear down a former hotel and replace it with apartments has been refused planning permission. The owner of Hotel Virginia, Falkland Road, Torquay, Devon, told Torbay Council's planning committee that the Victorian building was beyond saving.

The 25-bedroom hotel closed in 2022 and has become a magnet for anti-social behaviour. But planners turned down the proposal for a block of 14 apartments, due to the consideration of "heritage policies".

Owner Brett Powis said converting the existing building would not work, as the property would end up with "awful bedsits and small flats" and he did not want to be a "slum landlord". He said his proposal for a whole new building would stop the hotel becoming a blight on the local neighbourhood.

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The committee voted unanimously to refuse the application. But the decision has provoked outrage. In letters to our sister print title the Herald Express, one person describes the decision as 'just so depressing', saying that the last thing Torbay needs is another derelict hotel. However, in a second letter, Mervyn Seal, chairman of the Torbay Heritage Trust says the refusal was appropriate in again, a conservation area.

Read the full letters below

Torbay Council’s planning committee decision on the Virginia Hotel is just so depressing.

Just what we need: yet another derelict hotel.

Why?

Because this might cause the neighbours plus blue and red watches at local fire stations to worry about the building’s fate.

If there is one sort of property that is highly flammable in Torquay, it’s derelict hotels. In a chemical process of catastrophic spontaneous combustion, leave a hotel empty for long enough and someone will be calling 999.

In recent times a fiery finale for our unloved and unwanted hotels occurred at the Dorchester Hotel on Daddyhole Plain in March 2009. The next charred victim was the Palm Court Hotel on Torquay sea front in December 2010.

This was quickly followed by the Conway Court Hotel in Warren Road in December 2011. Things cooled down for a few years but a revival of Torquay’s unique fireworks display was sparked when the Shedden Hall Hotel on Shedden Hill Road ignited in April 2019.

While that hotel was still smouldering, we then had the blaze at the Coppice Hotel on the Babbacombe Road in February this year. I also recall the Foxlands Hotel on Babbacombe Road went up in smoke a few years ago but couldn’t pin down the date.

Of course, it’s not just derelict hotels that are flammable. It’s happened recently at working hotels like the Trecarn, the Headland and the Grand.

Presumably though, the owners there thought it was a lot less trouble and expense to repair the damage than end up on the planning committee’s naughty step with a flea in their ear for wanting to replace the old with the new.

The exception here was the Bancourt Hotel on Avenue Road. This closed after a fire in April 2017 which started while it was occupied by a Young Farmers group enjoying a quiet, peaceful weekend in Torquay.

Rumour has it that the Bancourt Hotel was built out of Teflon – or was it Kevlar – as, remarkably for an empty hotel, after seven years it has survived intact, to date...

So what’s going on?

Is there a pattern?

In reading again of these blazes at derelict hotels, mysterious, but unidentified, arsonists appear to be the culprits. These have either been members of the Squatter Gang, the Anti-Social Elements Gang, the Tramps Gang or even in the case of the Coppice Hotel, the Playing Children’s Gang.

There are suspicions the Squatter Gang are already at work at the Virginia Hotel and blue watch are standing by.

As I don’t recall seeing anyone charged in connection with these fires, I presume inquires are continuing. How’re you getting on, Miss Marple? Any leads?

I have of course heard uninformed, cynical conspiracy theorists speculating about the causes of these fires. Suspicion is rife. But of course, that is just gossip, tittle tattle. Who in their right minds would deliberately set fire to a shabby, run-down building that is riddled with damp and dry rot in order to redevelop the site with flats and houses worth half a million each?

Of course not. How ridiculous to suggest such a thing. It’s illegal. It’s just a great big coincidence and we should really be grateful that mother nature has dispensed with buildings that everyone – apart from the planning committee – regarded as eyesores.

All the same, if I lived in the vicinity of the Virginia Hotel, I would be preparing my evacuation plan and for a sleepless night just in case – or when? – fire engines from all over Devon suddenly arrive in the middle of the night.

Stand by, Miss Marple! Can I smell smoke...?

Alan Payling

Torquay

The Herald Express recently reported on the Hotel Virginia planning application refusal.

Architect Daniel Metcalfe remarked that “we can’t simply say that because something is old it demands preservation. This is a highly defective, rotten building.”

Mr Metcalfe is a qualified member of the Royal Institute of British Architects, naming himself as a conservation architect as an AABC (Architects Accredited in Conservation of Buildings).

However Historic England strongly recommends the gold standard Institute of Historic Building Conservation (IHBC) qualification as essential for a heritage advisor to give quality counsel on preserving and enhancing buildings like the Hotel Virginia, situated in a protected conservation area.

Mr Metcalfe’s assertion “this is a highly defective rotten building” suggests his client is not paying heed to Heritage England guidelines on managing risk to vacant historic buildings which states the best way to protect a building is to keep it occupied, even if the use is on a temporary or partial basis.

This highlights a current malaise by some owners of Victorian villas in Torquay, later converted to hotels. Owners today wish to engage a willing architect to profit by a major residential redevelopment on a cleared site, regardless of the building’s significant cultural heritage, by not carrying out good elementary house-keeping to reduce the risk of deterioration or damage. Keeping the building secure is the owner’s responsibility. It can be imagined some are even hopeful for a fire as, notoriously, at the Shedden Hall Hotel.

That hotel became derelict in 2012 and since then had been entered and vandalised by delinquents and damaged by a number of fires, eventually becoming that highly defective rotten building.

Then, still inadequately protected from trespassers, it was destroyed in a major fire, clearing the way for a planning application. A similar scenario of neglect and fire is playing out at the unoccupied Victorian Coppice Hotel.

Torquay’s planning authority has often ‘rewarded’ an irresponsible owner by allowing an incongruous new design in a designated conservation area.

At the Hotel Virginia, a refusal was appropriate in again, a conservation area.

Mervyn Seal, chairman

Torbay Heritage Trust