Hello and welcome to The Blackpool Lead.
In 2018, The New Hacketts Hotel was closed and marketed the world over as the site of a luxury care home.
Today, after multiple arson attacks, it is a car park.
Our edition looks at 28 claimants who are accusing the one-time developer of that care home of mis-selling investments in a care home that never came to pass.
Blackpool briefing
📚 Luke Beardsworth, The Lead’s senior editor for the north, and Michael Holmes, who reports for The Blackpool Lead, visited Revoe Learning Academy this week to talk about the benefits of a career in the media.
We spoke with years five and six about our combined experiences working as journalists and even set the kids a task to put a story together.
The event was organised as part of the Government’s Discover Creative Careers programme with funding provided by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (although we appeared strictly as volunteers).
🗞️ Homes in Blackpool this week received their first copies of the Reform UK “newspaper” The Reformer.
The eight-page leaflets are seen by the party as a way of bypassing traditional media channels - including GB News with whom they have been closely linked - and are being delivered to 20 million homes they view as target seats.
The publication follows recent negative coverage including undercover investigations into the party carried out by Channel 4 and ITV.
🛝 A Blackpool councillor says he is demanding answers from the Government over concerns of an apparent lack of prosecutions of vandalism on children’s playgrounds.
Cllr Paul Galley launched an investigation following the burning of the children’s play ship at Anchorsholme Park, where two teenagers were arrested but dealt with through community resolutions rather than prosecution.
Despite playground vandalism costing councils millions of pounds nationally, he says his research has so far identified cautions and other out-of-court disposals, but no clear examples of prosecutions specifically for playground vandalism under the Criminal Damage Act 1971.
However, Lancashire Police said that a number of factors were taken into consideration when the two youths arrested over the Anchorsholme incident were dealt with by a community resolution.
This is an informal, non-statutory “out-of-court” agreement used by the police to deal with low-level offences and minor incidents quickly and proportionately.
The playground’s swings, seesaws and groundworks were all vandalised in a separate and more recent incident last month.
Derelict Blackpool hotel, destroyed in multiple arson attacks, at centre of international storm
By Michael Holmes
A derelict Blackpool seafront hotel demolished after being targeted by firebugs has found itself at the centre of an international investment storm.
The New Hacketts Hotel, on Queens Promenade near Gynn Square in North Shore, shut in 2018 and was marketed around the world as the site of a luxury care home.
But the project collapsed - with the prominent building going on to be hit by fire twice in the space of months in early 2023, reducing it to little more than a charred shell.
There has been no suggestion that the arson attacks, which saw the building demolished and its footprint turned into a car park, are linked to the failed scheme.
But a retired overseas farmer who said he lost more than £400,000 is among 28 claimants, including 27 individuals and a Swiss family firm, who accused One Touch Solution of mis-selling investments in plush developments.
They alleged that One Touch, which marketed the developments on behalf of The Care Home Group (TCHG), also known as the Carlauren Group, in the likes of South Africa and Israel, sold them a “fail-safe, armchair investment” pipedream.
One Touch argued that it was merely a marketing agent for TCHG, whose care home developments all failed by mid-2019, rather than an adviser to investors, according to court papers seen by The Blackpool Lead.
But its website - whose material was seen by the court using internet archives - described it as an “online estate agent” that provided “property investment advice” to “clients”.
Petrus van der Merwe, a retired cattle farmer who was in the process of moving back to Namibia from Canada, arranged to buy four units in six months, including two in Blackpool.
One was in the name of his son, Martinus van der Merwe, and the other in the name of his recently widowed family friend Margaret Bester.
Using the cash from a farm sale in Canada and other savings, van der Merwe travelled to the UK for a meeting before deciding to invest.
In an earlier email from a consultant, who promised the best rooms with views of the Irish Sea, van der Merwe was sent a flyer for the “Queens Promenade”, which said the “former New Hacketts hotel (sic) will be transformed into a luxury lifestyle resort of c. 70 studios”.
It added: “Returns from 10% paid monthly” and “5-6 year 110%, 7-8% year 115%, 9 year 120% and 10 year 125% buyback”.
Van der Merwe is said to have lost £424,320, with the claimants investing a total of £2.8m, all or substantially all of which they lost.