Coach claims road ban will hit Team GB

Hotels set to bid for psychiatric hospital

SPEEDING

Mr Rochas

ONE of Britain’s top diving coaches told a judge Team GB’s Olympic prospects would suffer if his speeding conviction was upheld.

Plymouth diving head coach Alexandre Rochas said he drove students hopeful of competing in Tokyo to meets to ensure their parents did not take them to McDonald’s.

But his appeal was dismissed at Plymouth crown court, where he was banned from driving for six months and ordered to pay £330 costs.

GUESTS have included gangster Ronnie Kray and Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, and now you too could soon check in for a spell in Broadmoor.

It won’t be at Her Majesty’s pleasure, but as a hotel guest in the red-brick building which once housed the psychiatric hospital.

Patients, all detained under the Mental Health Act, have been moved to a new high-security hospital built in the Broadmoor grounds at Crowthorne, Berks.

The old building, dating back 157 years, is to go on sale within weeks and may be converted to a hotel.

Multi-million-pound bids will be invited for the former home of monsters such as Moors murderer Ian Brady, who died in 2017, at 79.

The building is owned by the

West London NHS Trust, which aims to make an eight-figure sum to help towards the new £250million “state of the art” hospital.

Upmarket hotel chains and developers looking to convert the old hospital into a care home are among those being asked to bid.

Residential flats could also replace other buildings on the site, with the grounds possibly being turned into football pitches.

The old hospital was declared “totally unfit for purpose” by the Care Quality Commission in 2009.

Parts of the building are Grade-II listed, including the gatehouse.

Victorian Society director Christopher Costelloe said he supported a hotel conversion “in principle”.

He added: “It’s no good if these old buildings are left empty because they just rot away.”

A spokesman for West London NHS Trust said: “A range of potential uses have been identified, including commercial and residential. Work on the marketing of the old site has not yet begun.”