Yahoo News Work can RESTART at Station Hotel after Court of Session hearing
Work can restart at the Station Hotel, the Court of Session has ruled today.
South Ayrshire Council announced that safety works can resume at the site of the fire hit Ayr building.
Council bosses confirmed that work will restart over the weekend.
It comes after work was dramatically halted on Wednesday following a legal challenge by the hotel's owner, Sunny Ung - known in official documents as Eng Huat Ung.
Ung accused council chiefs of demolishing the hotel without giving him proper notice in the aftermath of September's fire.
His challenge halted work on the site for three days until today's hearing in Edinburgh.
A spokesperson for South Ayrshire Council has said: "The Court of Session has agreed that the safety works can continue on site. We will continue to provide works progress updates."
Nearly £3 million has been spent taking the crumbling hotel apart since it was ravaged by an inferno more than seven months ago. Train services south of Ayr have been suspended ever since with the route to Glasgow also badly affected. It comes as council bosses were making progress on demolishing the northern wing of the hotel. They had hoped to complete their work by mid-June.
The local authority has been acting under Section 29 of the Dangerous Buildings (Scotland) Act which gives them powers to bring down a site in the interest of public safety. But Ung and his legal team challenged whether the council gave him "adequate notice" of such work.
One senior council source said after work was initially stopped: "If there was any doubt left that Mr Ung cares little for Ayr and its people, here is the proof. What does he hope to achieve by stopping demolition work at this stage of the process? To break his silence after all these years is a particular kick in the teeth at a time when the town and its people have already been forced to endure months of misery following the fire."
South Ayrshire chiefs were first forced to take charge of the site back in 2018 when they slapped a Dangerous Building Notice on the once iconic venue. They have been beset by political problems around its ownership ever since and had to spend £65,000 a month on a protective dome just to stop the hotel from falling down. The deliberate fire finally brought the issue to a head, with painstaking work ongoing to take it down during the last six months
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