'Rotten' Torquay hotel cannot be torn down for apartments

It has leaks, dry rot, wet rot and structural issues, but council votes to keep it

A tumbledown former hotel in Torquay’s tourist district can't be torn down to be replaced by apartments.

The owner of Hotel Virginia in Falkland Road told Torbay Council’s planning committee that the Victorian building is beyond saving.

It is also now a magnet for anti-social behaviour.

But panners turned down a plan to replace it with a block of 14 apartments.

Cllr Adam Billings (Con, Churston with Galmpton) said it was the most difficult decision he had faced on the planning committee.

The 25-bedroom hotel closed in 2022, and architect Dan Metcalfe said there had been many letters of support for the apartments plan. “They are from people who are fed up with the eyesore and who do not regard this building as a heritage asset. In fact they are bewildered by that description.”

He said "serious and irrevocable" defects are among "leaks, dry rot, wet rot and structural issues.

"We can’t simply say that because something is old that it demands preservation. This is a highly defective, rotten old building.”

Owner Brett Powis said it had struggled as a hotel and the previous owners had been happy to sell. Converting the existing building would not work, he said, and added: “It would end up with awful bedsits and small flats, and I don’t 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.

However, council planning officers said the proposal would harm conservation areas and overshadow neighbouring properties, and should be refused.

In a report they said: “The move away from a tourism use on the plot is not of great concern. The building should however be retained when considering heritage context.”

Margaret Forbes-Hamilton of the Torquay Neighbourhood Forum said that while the proposal would provide homes on a brownfield site, the building should be restored rather than demolished.

Historic England said the harm caused to the conservation area would be "substantial" and the Victorian Society said the proposed replacement building was "of undistinguished design."

Councillors asked if the conversion of the existing building was a viable option.

Cllr Nick Pentney (Lib Dem, Tormohun) said: “This is a really hard decision. We have seen what can happen when former hotel sites fall to rack and ruin and development is not forthcoming, and we definitely don’t want to see that here.

“We also have a housing crisis, but in our rush to have something there we can’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. We cannot ignore the fact that we have heritage policies to consider.

“I don’t think this proposal is so exceptionally good that it warrants us disregarding a massive part of our heritage.”

Cllr Billings said that while the hotel is in disrepair and had been broken into by squatters, the building itself could still be salvaged.

And Cllr Ras Virdee (Lib Dem, St Marychurch) went on: “Trying to refurbish the existing building and provide homes there would be the way forward.

“We should go back to the drawing board and see if this building can be salvaged.”

The committee voted unanimously to refuse the application.