The owner of the former Grosvenor Hotel building has pledged to ‘review the plans’ for the building after Bristol City Council took the company to court to order it to make the site safe.
Nimish Popat, from a company called Earlcloud Ltd, was in court today (Monday, November 28) to hear magistrates grant the city council a dangerous building order. It requires the owner to make the Grosvenor Hotel safe, either by knocking it down or by propping it up with specialist scaffolding.
Bristol Magistrates' Court heard that the building, opposite Temple Meads station, is in an even more dangerous condition than ever before following the fire of October 18. Magistrates were told the facade was ‘at risk of collapse’ because the floor and roof structure have ‘largely collapsed’.
Read more: Bizarre history of fire-hit Grosvenor Hotel from missing millions to a passport-eating dog
Bristol City Council sent solicitor Lynne Harvey and two of its structural engineers to the magistrates court to apply for the order. It is not the first time such an order has been made in a long and sometimes bizarre history of the slow decline of the once landmark hotel building.
Ms Harvey told magistrates that Mr Popat and his lawyer Angus Gloag QC had ‘constructive’ discussions with the council before the hearing this morning, and had agreed on the wording and conditions of the order. Earlcloud now have five weeks - effectively the rest of 2022 - to make the building safe, either by knocking it down or covering it in specialist scaffolding to protect it from falling down or bits falling off.
Since the fire, the council has expanded the ‘exclusion zone’ around the building to keep people safe, but the court heard this was having an impact on the highway because the exclusion zone has been pushed into the road at Temple Way. Ms Harvey said: “There have been previous complaints about the building, and in May 2020, the potential danger from falling masonry resulted in the council erecting fencing around the building.
"Then on Tuesday October 18, there was the significant event of the fire, and the building has been surveyed and the facade is at risk of collapse as the floor and roof structure have been largely collapsed. The building is in a dangerous condition,” she added.
'They want this site developed too'
Speaking for Earlcloud, Mr Gloag said: “The position of Earlcloud is they have been engaged with the council and they want this site developed too. Earlcloud definitely want this site developed as quickly as possible.
"The order is five weeks because the scaffolding that’s on the building at the moment will need to come down, to put new structural scaffolding on. Everyone is keen on progressing this as quickly as possible, and this should reduce the area of the exclusion zone,” he added.
Magistrates queried why the work to make the building safe would take five weeks and why nothing had happened six weeks since the fire. Mr Gloag said: “Structural engineers are going to have to sign off each move, and it’s going to be quite a tricky operation. If you try to rush it, it’s not going to work.”
Outside the court, Mr Popat told Bristol Live he wanted to see the building developed, but said his plan for the New Year after the building was made safe was ‘under review’.
Bristol City Council has had years of talking about taking out a Compulsory Purchase Order on the building, and announced its own plans for a replacement development back in 2019, with a developer. Mr Popat’s valuation of the building differs from the council, and the gap has effectively been the cause of the years of delay.
That delay was most recently punctuated by the bizarre episode where a businessman sold student flats to investors that didn’t have planning permission and didn’t exist in a building he didn’t own, as he and his wife spent the millions on luxury shopping sprees around the world. That businessman Sanjiv Varma is currently on the run from a prison sentence for contempt of court over the affair, and believed to be in Dubai.
Back at the Grosvenor Hotel, Mr Popat told Bristol Live today the most important priority was to make the building safe. “We’re very keen to see it be redeveloped, there are just some issues that have prevented that. We’re wanting to work with the council once this is made safe, and will review the plans in terms of the future in the New Year.”
Read next:
- Before the fire - inside the 'really weird' Grosvenor Hotel
- As it happened - the Grosvenor Hotel fire
- Fugitive Bristol businessman banned and on the run
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