Stagecoach duo buy Waverley Hotel

Oct 8 2010 by Denis Brown, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

STAGECOACH boss Brian Souter and his sister Ann Gloag have bought the Fair City’s controversial Waverley Hotel.

The deal, believed to have already been finalised, will see the multi-millionaires acquire one of Perth’s oldest hotels from the ashes of previous owner, the McKever Group.

Mr Souter was relatively tight-lipped about his York Place purchase but did not hesitate to nip any speculation about the hotel’s future in the bud.

“We intend to improve and enhance the facility and it will continue as a refuge for homeless people in Perth,” he told the PA.

The Stagecoach supremo declined to comment on a source’s claim that plans may be afoot to use part of the hotel in conjunction with the neighbouring Trinity Church of the Nazarene, which he is understood to own.

A Perth and Kinross Council spokesman confirmed PKC staff had met with the new owner, who had given assurances the hotel would continue as a B&B for homeless people “for the foreseeable future”.

After entrepreneurial owner of 20 Scottish hotels Alistair McKever called in administrators last year with £70m debts, speculation was rife as to the Waverley’s future and its dependent clientele.

Liquidators were hotly tipped to sell the rundown establishment, which Mr McKever had bought with the view of maintaining it as a homeless shelter operated by the council.

Widely regarded by many Fair City denizens as an eyesore, the run-down York Place digs, with more than 40 bedrooms, takes in vulnerable people on social service referral.

The Waverley remains a key asset for PKC, which is struggling to source enough suitable temporary accommodation options for the 1200 people desperately seeking roofs over their heads every year.

A controversy magnet, with residents often seen drinking outside or on benches at the AK Bell Library, the hotel took flak when staff received Hepatitis B jags and a family residing there described it as a prison.

Angry local Bridget McGregor told the PA, that far from being a “flagship” homeless shelter, the hotel was a blight on the town’s landscape and had suffered from a drastic lack of investment by owners.

“It is so bad that even people with nowhere else to turn don't want to be placed there,” she said.

In September last year, an ex-Waverley staffer claimed that post-closure, homeless people would spill onto streets, spark an anti-social epidemic and strangle tourism.

Discussing the severe shortage of homeless accommodation, Peter Barrett, convener of PKC’s housing and health committee, conceded last year that the Waverley’s B&B operation was “not ideal”.

He said PKC had been successful in reducing the number of B&B placements – a last-ditch option for housing single homeless people or families in lieu of vacancies at hostels or self-contained properties.

“We’ve had no breaches of unsuitable accommodation orders in some time now, and ideally we’d like to get these people into settled temporary accommodation and then into permanent accommodation,” he said.

“But it’s a big task, especially with the considerable increase in the number of people presenting themselves as homeless.

“If circumstances were to change at the Waverley, then we’d have to take steps to address that, whether it’s alternative B&B accommodation or existing hostel accommodation.”