Bridport and Lyme Regis News Coverage
Letters from David Young and John Grantham appeared in this week's paper. Click through to read them.
What about plans process?
I was interested to read the article in last weeks Bridport News under the title ‘Brewery plans are ready’ in particular that comment by Palmers about the Three Cups hotel in Lyme Regis where it states that ‘Palmers has this week insisted it will never be a hotel again’.
If I was in the planning department at West Dorset District Council I would be most concerned that such a high profile company would seem not to be governed by the same planning process as that which applies to everyone else.
Palmers should assume nothing until the process of consultation, application, objections and possible enquiry has been completed.
Only then, if they are successful at the end of this process, would they be able to make such a statement.
It should also be a concern of the planning department that this pre-emptive statement may be considered by some to indicate that an accommodation has already been reached by WDDC and Palmers which, if it were the case, would be totally inappropriate.
Yours sincerely
David Young
************************************************************
Report’s major shortcomings
Despite Lyme residents 235-0 vote to keep the Three Cups Hotel ‘as a hotel’ and 1,397 people signing a petition in just 24 hours - Lyme Regis News confirms Palmers say it’ll never be a hotel again:
“A spokesman for the brewery said….the hotel option has been explored using independent specialists to produce a report that was independently verified for WDDC. The outcome was that a hotel was found to be economically unviable”.
But the facts are:
The Palmers-commissioned TRI Report suffers from significant shortcomings. It compares ‘like with unlike’, contrasting the 13 or 20 bedroom unique Three Cups Hotel against a stock of “major chain-operated hotels of up to 50 bedrooms” – any market researcher would shudder at this comparison of the Cups against a database of hotels very unlike it. It then assumes it’ll cost the price of a whole new house to do up each ‘bedroom’ – between £206,000 and £231,000 each! And TRI have added no less than £25,000 for furniture for each of these rooms! Moreover, the TRI Report was never “verified for WDDC” - the Goadsby Report certainly did not assert “that a hotel was economically unviable”. The Council Leader, challenged, could only say, 4 months after Goadsby’s publication, that the Council still “hasn’t taken a final view on the viability of the Three Cups Hotel as a hotel”!
Why? It’s clear: TRI has significant shortcomings and Goadsby did not confirm in principle that a hotel would be unviable.
What does WDDC do now? The Reports patently don’t do what they perhaps had hoped.
And John Dover says – “there are hoteliers in the wings, wanting to buy it as a hotel”!
And yet a Consultation Day WITHOUT a hotel option?
“Is this listening?!”
John Grantham
Community Alert on Pubs and Hotels
What about plans process?
I was interested to read the article in last weeks Bridport News under the title ‘Brewery plans are ready’ in particular that comment by Palmers about the Three Cups hotel in Lyme Regis where it states that ‘Palmers has this week insisted it will never be a hotel again’.
If I was in the planning department at West Dorset District Council I would be most concerned that such a high profile company would seem not to be governed by the same planning process as that which applies to everyone else.
Palmers should assume nothing until the process of consultation, application, objections and possible enquiry has been completed.
Only then, if they are successful at the end of this process, would they be able to make such a statement.
It should also be a concern of the planning department that this pre-emptive statement may be considered by some to indicate that an accommodation has already been reached by WDDC and Palmers which, if it were the case, would be totally inappropriate.
Yours sincerely
David Young
************************************************************
Report’s major shortcomings
Despite Lyme residents 235-0 vote to keep the Three Cups Hotel ‘as a hotel’ and 1,397 people signing a petition in just 24 hours - Lyme Regis News confirms Palmers say it’ll never be a hotel again:
“A spokesman for the brewery said….the hotel option has been explored using independent specialists to produce a report that was independently verified for WDDC. The outcome was that a hotel was found to be economically unviable”.
But the facts are:
The Palmers-commissioned TRI Report suffers from significant shortcomings. It compares ‘like with unlike’, contrasting the 13 or 20 bedroom unique Three Cups Hotel against a stock of “major chain-operated hotels of up to 50 bedrooms” – any market researcher would shudder at this comparison of the Cups against a database of hotels very unlike it. It then assumes it’ll cost the price of a whole new house to do up each ‘bedroom’ – between £206,000 and £231,000 each! And TRI have added no less than £25,000 for furniture for each of these rooms! Moreover, the TRI Report was never “verified for WDDC” - the Goadsby Report certainly did not assert “that a hotel was economically unviable”. The Council Leader, challenged, could only say, 4 months after Goadsby’s publication, that the Council still “hasn’t taken a final view on the viability of the Three Cups Hotel as a hotel”!
Why? It’s clear: TRI has significant shortcomings and Goadsby did not confirm in principle that a hotel would be unviable.
What does WDDC do now? The Reports patently don’t do what they perhaps had hoped.
And John Dover says – “there are hoteliers in the wings, wanting to buy it as a hotel”!
And yet a Consultation Day WITHOUT a hotel option?
“Is this listening?!”
John Grantham
Community Alert on Pubs and Hotels
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