More than a hundred staff have lost their jobs with the closure of the Brighton i360 less than a week before Christmas.
A London company, Interpath Advisory, said that the Brighton i360 had closed after the appointment of joint administrators.
Interpath said: “Steve Absolom and Will Wright from Interpath were appointed joint administrators to Brighton i-360 Limited earlier today (Friday 20 December).
“The company owns and operates the i360 observation tower in Brighton, a 162m high observation tower designed by renowned architects David Marks and Julia Barfield.
“The company had significant legacy liabilities dating back to the time of its construction.
“Unfortunately, trading revenues over recent years were insufficient to fund both the attraction’s operating costs and the debt repayments as they fell due.
“Over recent weeks, the directors sought to seek a buyer who would be able to take the business forward with new investment.
“Unfortunately, however, a transaction was unable to be agreed, and as such, the directors resolved to place the Company into administration.
“Regrettably, with no funding available for the attraction to continue to operate, and following the appointment of the joint administrators, the Brighton i360 has closed with immediate effect.
“Sadly, all 109 employees have been made redundant.
“Customers are advised that all forward bookings will not be able to go ahead.”
Interpath managing director Steve Absolom, one of the joint administrators, said: “First and foremost, our thoughts are with the loyal and dedicated staff at i360 who will be devasted by this news, particularly given the time of year.
“Our immediate priority will be to work with all of them to provide them with the support they need to make claims to the Redundancy Payments Service.”
Mr Absolom added: “Despite engagement with key stakeholders and several interested parties over recent weeks, the directors have been unable to secure a rescue deal and avoid administration.
“Our focus will now be on working with the freehold landowners to establish a short window of opportunity for someone to step forward and resurrect the business on the site in the new year.”
Interested parties should contact Charlie Carter at Interpath at charlie.carter@interpath.com.
100 staff … That’s going to be a wage bill of over £3million. No wonder they didn’t make a profit. How many people does it take to book people in, 1 or 2, 2 to run it, a manager for bookings. 100 people wow
According to the filed accounts ending June 2023 155 staff and 6 directors. Staff employment costs £2,436,415. Directors got no pay. Looks like they were shedding staff already – or maybe that number is a seasonal high water mark.
Turnover was £5.8 Million.
They re-valued the fixed assets and wrote off £28 Million as impaired assets, making the bottom line look very poor, but probably honest.
They paid over 3 Million in loan interest alone.
It owes £67 Million to it’s creditors
From these numbers above you can see that it was never, ever going to get its head above water.
It should have gone bust years ago.
This would be a great spot for social housing. Come on Labour do what working class voted for!
Why does social housing have to be in prime location? It would only be trashed in a matter of months.
No one is going to build any form of housing slap bang on the beach!
Social housing ??? if housing then sell it to a company that can clean up the site and return a lump of money to the council, social housing brings no income but others can make it work because plenty of people have money to invest in a seafront home,, not so the people who are lower income in affordable housing.
Sympathy for the staff.
100 Staff-Blimey that’s a lot for what is it isn’t it-I thought about 20/30 Worked there.
I feel for the Staff who lose there Jobs no matter what time of Year tbh, they really enjoy working there don’t they.
Surely it will be dismantled now and for Scrap or another Location in the Uk.
Another idiotic waste of taxpayers money. Any fool could see that this was a white elephant. If Brighton really want to attract people to the town why not drastically reduce the sky high rip off parking charges and anti car policy for a start. As a motorist and a cyclist – the cycle lane on Madeira Drive was also totally unnecessary.
Taxpayers money?
Would be good for something positive to come out of this.
The poor staff. Can Brighton and Hove news set up a crowdfunder to help pay their wages? I’d donate
Good point: I would too. You are a good lad
Any normal person could see that this was never going to work. No, they could not just rebuild the pier, a tried and tested attraction! They went for this ridiculous monstrosity. The same people who like to throw around money that does not belong to them and is no risk to them. They should be held responsible for this.
Feel bad for the staff who have been made suddenly redundant, just before Christmas.
Here we go…….Another Blackpool……Beautiful Brighton reduced to another shabby and broken holiday resort…..This eye sore will be the first to go…and the rest of big attractions will follow…….call it dole city soon
I lived there for 28 wonderful years…..its so sad
Right from the outset it was blindingly obvious that this monstrosity was a financial disaster waiting to happen. The concept had been punted around for some while and reportedly thirteen local authorities had declined the architect’s invitation to host this supposed gold mine before B&H Council said yes. Bit of a clue there, I think. Of course it was all going to be built with privater investment at no cost to the host city – but private investors, who know a thing or two about making money shook their heads and walked away. That might have been another clue for the council had they thought about it, but apparently they didn’t. Now we have this eyesore – it probably looks , but thatOK in the right setting, but that certainly isn’t where its at – which owes us a huge and unrecoverable debt. Yes, the sensible option would be to take it down but that will cost more millions which we will have to pay for. And the idea of selling it to another local authority is a complete non-starter, for added to the initial assessments of all those councils who rejected the idea of building it on their patch is its track record of failure in one of the UK’s prime locations. It reads like a very bad comedy script for daytime TV.
The red aviation light atop the pole is lit. The pod is on the pole, its underside red lit at night. I wonder how this ongoing electricity need is to be financed. Does BHCC have to assume responsibility for ongoing costs of the closed ‘attraction’?
A Wetherspoons pod pub?
pay the owers there money people used to work there end of it hotel sky up and down