o The 19-storey Lume Hotel has opened on Manchester’s Oxford Road, offering 12 lower storeys (212 guest rooms) operated by Crowne Plaza Hotels and including a 120-seat restaurant, gym club lounge and seven meetings rooms for more than 200 delegates.

The upper 7 storeys, operated by Staybridge Suites, offer 116 studio and one-bedroom suites, as well as panoramic views over Manchester from the 18th floor terrace. (The Business Desk)

 

o A clay pigeon shooter has been found dead during a shoot at Clandon Park House, a Grade 1 listed National Trust property near Guildford, Surrey.

It is thought that he was cleaning his gun when it went off and shot him in the head.

Clandon Park House, a Palladian mansion, was gutted down to a shell in 2015 when a serious fire, thought to have been started in electrical circuitry in the basement, ripped through the building. Since then a salvage plan has been completed and there are now ambitious re-build plans in place.

 

o Furious objections have been lodged over plans to demolish the current 906 bedroom Holiday Inn London – Kensington Forum Hotel, part of Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG) on Cromwell Road and replace it with a 50% bigger building comprising two towers and containing 749 bedrooms, 340 serviced apartments and 46 homes to buy or rent.

The current building, near Gloucester Road tube station is described as a “brutalist eyesore”, offers more than 20 meetings spaces and is said to be London’s fifth biggest hotel. A previous rejected plan by the owners, Queensgate Investment would have replaced the current hotel with a 2,000 room monster that would have been the biggest in the world. Since the Grenfell tragedy last year high rise buildings have been a particularly sensitive issue in Kensington borough