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May 14, 2022·edited May 14, 2022

First off, the Post is a hugely welcome addition to journalism in Liverpool - glad to be a subscriber and support this endeavour.

Second: it's great to see such a lengthy piece on the heartbreaking decline of the Adelphi, and the insights from a historian - congratulations to whoever commissioned this, and to David Lloyd for writing it.

But all this makes it additionally disappointing at some failures of journalistic curiosity in the piece - especially when you are writing and publishing for a city where people have learned over the years just why you shouldn't take powerful figures' statements at face value, or let people with vested interests comment unchallenged without assessing their motives, or ignore the actual Liverpudlians whose lives are affected by the subject you're investigating, whether they are the people whose jobs are involved (and at stake) or citizens whose tax money may, yet again, be up for grabs.

You've noted that there are huge cuts to staff planned. You didn't mention that this is a unionised hotel - staff are members of RMT - and has been for some time; talking to Adelphi employees' reps - not just a few scattered overheard staff comments in passing - should have been seen as what it is: a basic and valuable step in finding out exactly what's going on. A quick web search will show RMT has been pointing out for several years now about the 'poverty pay' and terrible working conditions of staff at the Adelphi; there was a strike in 2016; in October 2020, 80 staff were laid off after furlough ended (yep, the hotel owners had been benefitting from government money for furlough and for providing rooms to people who desperately needed them - you may not think homeless people belong in a former luxury hotel, but the fact is that the owners were getting yet more money from the public purse to do so).

So - in investigating what is going wrong at The Adelphi, and has for some time, why not talk to the representatives of the people who work here, if you're looking for views from all sides? You don't need to be particularly pro-union to think that approaching RMT for a comment might be useful. You don't even need to take RMT's views at face value - I hope you would subject their comments to scrutiny too. But it's a big oversight not to have done so.

Additionally, the matter of Urban Splash. As a quick Google would show, Urban Splash are by no means an uncontroversial operator in the hugely profitable development and redevelopment landscape in the UK. Just ask Mancunians who have criticised their significant role in the city and the social cleansing that has resulted. Or in Salford, where artists and others protested its Springfield Lane development that was bereft of affordable housing (per requirements). Or Sheffield, where Urban Splash was given the huge, iconic Park Hill estate for free and the end result was hugely controversial in terms of how the 'renewal' was carried out and how long it took, who was displaced and who moved in, who profited and who lost out. Or Croydon, where Inside Croydon reported that Urban Splash broke loan covenants and needed multi-million-pound bail-outs to enable it to continue trading, and in a number of buildings 'have been reported as having used flammable cladding which failed to comply with building safety regulation'. All this is a matter of public record.

Sooooo... interesting to hear that the 'colourful', New Labour-supporting Urban Splash founder Tom Bloxham has ideas about what could be done at the Adelphi... but knowing his company's reputation over several years, and the journalism elsewhere that has endeavoured to highlight controversy and hold the company to account, it seems a shame that an initiative as important as The Post wouldn't look critically not just at the current (and very long-running) issues at The Adelphi, but ask informed questions about how those who work there are treated, and the motives (and past form) of companies keen to get involved. Liverpool deserves a plan for the hotel that benefits everyone, not just an influx of new spivs picking at its carcass while profiting off public funds.

Also - as an aside - not every room is in a terrible state, despite the overall grim decline. I have stayed here several times before, during/inbetween and after lockdown, and as recently as this year, and had the good, the iffy and the-a-bit-ugly on several floors. By the way, the people given emergency housing here may not have been tourists, but I've had and seen more aggro here and elsewhere in Liverpool from well-to-do 'proper' guests (who I've seen involved in at least as many instances of visible drug-taking and drinking and general affray). I don't doubt that there are some grumpy staff - Lloyd's experience sounds very plausible - but by the sounds of it, if I worked there, I might feel the same sometimes, and the staff I interacted with were helpful, personable and clearly doing their best. It's the owners I'd like to hold to account, but of course we don't ever see them, just someone on poverty wages trying their best to get you another room when a door stops working or plumbing that hasn't been taken care of in decades gives up the ghost. It's still heartbreaking, but paying (sometimes) less than £30 to stay in a jaw-dropping building in the heart of the city is pretty astonishing.

End of the day, if you're concerned about the fate of The Adelphi, you need to be concerned about the people who work there and the people in the city it's in. Your readers certainly will be.

Thanks again for this important piece. But please make sure The Post's journalism punches up, not down. Question people's agendas when you talk to them. Think about who you should be interviewing. It's core to good journalism and I really look forward to seeing The Post do exactly that in the stories it covers - Liverpool needs it.

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May 14, 2022Liked by Mollie Simpson

Thanks for this wonderful account of Bates Motel. Collapsing capitalism certainly lacks nothing if not shamelessness. My first glimpse of the place was in about 1951 when my big brother took me into town from Page Moss. We stood on a bomb site somewhere near Lewis’s and watched a man padlocked in chains who escaped from a sack. We were terrified by the Adelphi towering over us. It was daunting. When I saw Roy Rogers and Trigger at the Empire in 1954 nobody told me they stayed there. Starting work in town in 1963, now one of the swarms of insurance clerks in possession of our first suits and non school ties, I was guided in by older colleagues. I learned about Grand National weekends and the American Bar, although the bar in the Ribble Bus Station always felt more congenial. But the Adelphi, so I was told, was good for gin and tonic and impressing girlfriends. My next memorable visit was years later when that same big brother died in a car crash. His company’s HR director took his partner, me and me mam to the Adelphi’s French restaurant to discuss what happened to his pension. Even then it was clearly struggling with maintaining its hauteur and over the years its various attempts to revive were ever more tacky. And opposite is Lewis’s, its windows still proclaiming it will be the heart of a leisure-led retail revolution, or some similar BS. And Lime Street is still chaos. And student rabbit hutches still pose as development. Meanwhile, the St Ally’s class of ‘51 still meets in town for a pint, desperate for a proper pub. And one of the gang is in a Facebook group for Adelphi chefs. « Just cook, will yer. »

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Britannia land bank. The adelphi is not on its own. They have blighted Wolverhampton & Llandudno. Manchester had to cpo the old fire station from them after years of nothing. That's the difference between the midland in Morecambe - unless liverpool CPO there is no pressure that can be used. And the council wouldn't get support for using public money for this purpose even if they had 10 years to commit

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Embarrassing hotel… just cannot understand why anyone would set foot in there… let alone stay there

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In the same way the lunatics have taken over the asylum, the riff-raff have taken over the Adelphi.

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This is a fantastic read, it’s great to have the inside story.

I’d love to see it restored to its former glory.

I’ll even get the bus into town and stay in it myself if that ever happens.

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Thank you!

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deletedMay 14, 2022Liked by Mollie Simpson
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