A derelict fire-damaged Lincolnshire hotel has sold at auction for £181,000.
South Holland District Council was out-bid for the property which had been carrying a guide price of £80,000.
The hammer went down at more than £100,000 over the guide at the AuctionHouse online auction last week.
It was one of 73 lots from around East Anglia and the Midlands being sold and the district council was hoping to buy it to ensure a speedy redevelopment of the eyesore site.
“As a council we have recently created an Untidy Sites register, including the Bridge Hotel at Sutton Bridge, to deal with South Holland’s derelict and untidy sites,” said Coun Rodney Grocock, portfolio holder for assets and planning.
He said the council would have been willing to step in and buy the hotel if no-one had shown interest, just to ensure it didn’t remain sitting derelict into the future.
“Contacting the owners of these sites has often proven difficult for us as many of them are overseas investors.
“When the council was informed that the Bridge Hotel was being sold at auction, a decision was made for an officer to attend and be involved in the bidding process to try and purchase the site, up to a pre-agreed amount.
“I believe this was the correct course of action that would have allowed us to ensure the hotel was sold and redeveloped quickly and correctly.
“Unfortunately at the auction this week the hotel sold for significantly more than the council was prepared to pay.
“However, I am still very pleased to see the site sold and am looking forward to the new owner developing it in the near future so we are able to remove it from our Untidy Sites register.”
The Bridge Hotel has a chequered history and was left derelict following a huge blaze in 2016.
It was already semi-derelict prior to the blaze and was left as a shell which was not safe to enter.
In 2012 Mike Taylor, of Bridge for Heroes, abandoned a bid to buy it and the building was sold for £195,000 to an entrepreneur who wanted to re-open it.
But in 2015 permission was granted to demolish the building and replace it with flats.
Since then it has fallen into further disrepair and become the centre of anti-social behaviour.
Coun Grocock said of the 12 sites on the council’s register needing attention, only five remained with little or no movement from the owners.
He said there had been contact with owners of the majority but the process was often extremely complicated.
