Royal Albion Hotel owner makes first payment towards fire repairs
The seafront building was badly damaged by a blaze in 2023
A first instalment has been paid to Brighton and Hove City Council towards the cost of making the Royal Albion Hotel safe.
At a council cabinet meeting yesterday afternoon (Thursday 20 March), the Labour leader of the council, Bella Sankey, said that she was “delighted” to announce that Britannia Hotels had paid £500,000 towards the work following a fire in July 2023.
The council has spent at least £1.5 million on demolition and safety work since the fire.
Demolishing the damaged section of the listed building took four months partly because of efforts to preserve or record what remained – and partly because of weather and site logistics.
Work did not start in earnest for several days after the fire while 3D scans of the hotel were carried out and heritage features were logged in consultation with Historic England.
Once work was under way, demolition crews had to take each piece of the hotel’s upper floors down individually for safety reasons.
Matters were complicated because of difficulties in positioning heavy machinery close to the hotel over fears that the pavement could collapse into a basement area below, which stretches into Pool Valley.
Last month the A259 seafront road had to close for a second time as the fire-damaged remains of the north wall and the scaffolding were at at risk of catastrophic failure, adding to the costs.