New ‘Kitchen Nightmare’ for La Gondola as fears over bats halt demolition plans
A DERELICT Derby restaurant and hotel that was set for demolition will remain standing over concerns that bats may be living in the roof.
The owners of La Gondola, once featured on TV show Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, have had an application to knock it down declined due to concerns that the nocturnal creatures may be living at the premises.
La Gondola, in Osmaston Road, was purchased by developer Elgie Properties in April for £745,000, who said that it had little choice but to demolish the site which is in a desperate state of disrepair.
The owners submitted a planning application to Derby City Council last month and proposed that the site be flattened to make way for apartment blocks by the end of November.
However, Derby City Council has rejected the application over concerns that bats may be living in the building’s roof spaces, potentially delaying the demolition for many months.
A bat survey conducted on behalf of the council in September concluded that the building was indeed “suitable for bats”.
The report said:
“There are numerous potential entry points into the structure of the building.
“The site is in an urban area, but there are sufficient habitats in the vicinity of the site to support bats, and a roost was recorded 540m from the site in 2013.”
Derby City Council said in the decision documents that it “wishes to control the method of demolition” and that further surveys would be needed to establish if bats are present at the site.
The Derby Telegraph understands that no bats were found at the site at the time of the survey but it was deemed “as having high suitability for bats” and so further surveys for hibernating bats in winter and roosting bats in spring and summer are needed to “inform appropriate mitigation measures.” Sam Elgie, of Elgie Properties, bought La Gondola earlier this year, alongside his partner Trisha and business partners Sean Cheung and Joey Wan.
Mr Elgie said: “It’s not ideal at all. Obviously, we are always going to maintain wildlife. If there’s bats there then we will go from that point but I wasn’t made aware that there were bats there. It’s not saying that bats are definitely there, it’s a case of finding out if there are bats there.”
He said in May that he would be happy to work with Derby City Council to build affordable housing for council use on the land.
Bats are protected by UK law under the Wildlife and Countryside Act. Knowingly destroying a bat habitat without proper mitigation is a criminal offence.
Last year, UK-based construction company Bellway was forced to pay a £600,000 fine when it knowingly demolished a bat roosting site in southeast London in 2018.
La Gondola opened in 1969 and was one of Derby’s most fashionable venues in the 1970s and 1980s but the business went downhill in the years that followed.
In 2005, the hotel featured on Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares shortly after former owner Daniela Bayfield took over the business.
La Gondola closed to guests two years later and went into voluntary administration.
Ms Bayfield had hoped to turn the site into a refugee shelter when she died in 2019.