Tributes paid to North Yorkshire NHS and care workers on covid anniversaryHarrogate hospital issues plea amid long delaysPeter Banks: the man withdrawing from Rudding Park

Peter Banks is giving out books. They’re copies of one of his favourite novels, Shane by Jack Schaefer, and he’s milling around Rudding Park Hotel, dropping them off with various former colleagues as leaving gifts. 

That’s because, after spending the best part of three decades creating Britain’s best hotel, he’s just called it a day. He hasn’t been on the payroll at Rudding Park for a couple of weeks now, but his bearing is of a man still in his own domain. It’s clearly hard to let go. 

In an exclusive interview with the Stray Ferret, he told us: 

“I’m a rescuer, I’m a sorter-outer. When there’s a problem, I know what to do and what to say to people to get them to come out with the desired result. It’s incredibly stressful but incredibly flattering being at the centre of all that.

“I’ve been mainlining that for 28 years. When all of a sudden that goes, it’s like your dealer’s left town, he hasn’t given you a forwarding address, he’s not answering your phone calls, and you’re going ‘cold turkey’. It’s pretty brutal.” 

If it sounds like a strong drug, perhaps that’s because Peter’s first ‘hit’ was so powerful. A self-confessed “gobby idiot” as a boy, his careers master – who despaired of his “scattergun humour” – told him: 

“Banksy, you ought to try something with your mouth, not your brain. Try hotels.”

Rudding Park

‘An exercise in survival’

So following a “good education”, thanks to a bursary at Christ’s Hospital, the Tudor-era independent school in West Sussex, he left to become a management trainee at the Savoy in London. 

He said: 

“I still remember to this day going into the kitchen of the Savoy as a spotty 17-year-old, and there was this maelstrom of noise.  

“The head chef was there with his massive, tall hat, and it was all in French: ‘Ça marche! Envoyer!’, ‘Oui, chef – coming now!’. And all this food would arrive out of various areas and would be put together on the hotplate. It was like an ocean-going liner’s engine room, there was that much going on.  

“And then these incredibly glamorous, good-looking Italian waiters with dark, swept-back hair and flashing brown eyes, wearing tailcoats and stiff collars, glided into this maelstrom of noise, picked up these beautiful trays of food and then went back out of the swing doors.  

“We followed them out, and there was a string quartet playing in the Thames Foyer, and I just thought it was so glamorous. I thought, this is the job for me. I was hooked.” 

The highs were offset by some alarming lows, though. Assigned to the meat department on his first day, within 10 minutes a “massive” butcher tried to strangle him in a pitch-black service lift simply because he didn’t like management trainees. On another occasion, he was kicked headfirst into a hot oven by a disgruntled chef. It was, he says, “an exercise in survival”. 

But it also gave him a thorough grounding in every aspect of the business, and during his five years there Peter worked as a waiter, barman, chef, fruit-and-veg porter, switchboard operator, housekeeper, receptionist, cashier, maintenance man and even ‘carpet spotter’, getting burns and stains out of carpets. 

He then took his skills to Scotland, working, “drinking and playing a lot of golf” at the Old Course Hotel in St Andrews, before moving back to London and the Hilton on Park Lane, which was, he says, “an absolute zoo”.  

He says: 

“The manager would say, ‘You’ll never get anybody’s respect until you sack someone!’. I disagreed. 

“I hated working there. I used to come out of Hyde Park Corner tube station each morning and see the Hilton in front of me, and I’d be really disappointed that it hadn’t burnt down in the middle of the night!” 

But it was there that he was told to “look after our guests as if they were your guests in your home”. He says: 

“If you do that, 999 times out of 1,000 you’re going to get it right. If this person was a guest at my house, what would I say to him? You wouldn’t say ‘The kitchen’s closed’ – you’d rustle him something up.” 

It was an approach that he’d never forget and that would serve him well at his next posting, which he secured after seeing a small ad posted by a brand-new hotel in The Caterer. If the Savoy, the Old Course and the Hilton were ‘gateway drugs’, he would find his main fix in Harrogate. 

Rudding Park Spa

Rudding Park

The manager at the Hilton had told Peter that moving up to Yorkshire would be the “death of his career”, so when he and owner Simon Mackaness launched the brand-new Rudding Park Hotel on April 15, 1997, he set out to prove him wrong.  

Initially only in charge of housekeeping, bedrooms and reception, he soon started accumulating extra responsibilities, and within a few years he was in charge of the whole thing. Gathering the staff, he told them: 

“First of all, we’re going to be the best hotel in Harrogate. Second, we’re going to be the best hotel in the north of England. Then we’re going to be the best hotel in England, and then we’re going to be the best hotel in Britain. That’s where we’re going from here.” 

Commercially minded, he did leave for a stint to open his own boutique restaurant with rooms in Southwold, Suffolk, while still working for Simon Mackaness two days a fortnight. Sutherland House was the first in the UK to list food miles on the menu, and was already winning awards within a year of opening, but Peter got bored and came back to Yorkshire. 

He said: 

“I was polishing glasses at 12 o’clock at night, and I realised that it didn’t matter whose glasses you were polishing, you’re still polishing glasses at midnight.” 

Returning to Rudding Park, he oversaw the most dramatic programme of expansion and upgrade seen by a Yorkshire hotel in decades. 

An £8 million project in 2010 doubled the number of rooms to 90, which meant that staff numbers doubled too. In 2017, a £10 million scheme saw the launch of the spa, requiring a further 50 employees. 

Under his management, Rudding Park’s turnover grew from £2m to £28m, and staff numbers ballooned from 20 to 400.

Along the way, the hotel has collected scores of awards, including the “industry Oscar” that Peter says he’s proudest of – the Independent Hotel Catey of the Year in 2019, which marked Rudding Park out as the best hotel in the UK. 

He says: 

“That vindicated all the work and stuck two fingers up at everyone who laughed at me for coming up here.” 

Highs and lows

He’s also welcomed some extremely high-profile guests. He’s taken President George Bush Sr (“a real gentleman”) for a golf-buggy tour of the grounds, had Archbishop Desmond Tutu (“a funny guy”) taking a turn on reception, and even caddied for President Bill Clinton. He says: 

“Clinton was incredible. I thought that I was immune to charisma, but he had that incredible skill of making you feel like the most wanted, important person in the world. He left the room and it felt strangely empty, and then you realised it was because he’d gone out. Amazing.” 

The satisfaction he takes from the Catey win is made all the sweeter by the fact that his time at Rudding Park has not been a uniformly easy ride: there have been hard times too. 

In 2008, a couple who were regular customers were tragically killed when their helicopter crashed in the grounds, and in another incident, a colleague died on duty when struck down by a heart attack. 

Then there was covid, which played havoc with the hospitality industry worldwide and forced many hotels and restaurants to close permanently. After a fortnight of tense uncertainty under lockdown, staff were furloughed and Peter set about keeping them active and engaged, as he recounted for the Stray Ferret in 2020. But although he acknowledges the wider catastrophe, his feelings are not all negative. He says: 

“In an ironic, strange way I almost enjoyed covid after those two weeks, because it was problem management: who can be quickest, who can be most creative?” 

Photo of Peter Banks, the former manager of Rudding Park Hotel in Harrogate.

That fleet-footed flexibility is a quality that hotel managers have always needed to have, but some things are not the same as they used to be. So just what has changed over the 38 years Peter has been in hospitality? He says: 

“It’s much better. There’s none of the ‘homicidal chef’ activity going on. There’s none of the monstrous abuses of power that I experienced at the Hilton.  

“Also, when I started, the guests would accept a lot more, but now – with all the TV shows like Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares – they’re all ‘experts’.  

“Social media has made our job a lot more difficult – anybody can say whatever they like about you and your property to the whole wide world, and you have no recourse. 

“They slag off staff as well. I’m big enough and ugly enough to take it, but when they have a go at the staff, it demotivates the team. Some of them might leave. If we’re not careful, we’re only going to be left in this industry with people who don’t care – and then it really will be bad.” 

He adds: 

“Every time there’s a complaint, that’s a scar on your back. In this industry, you don’t so much get physical injuries, but you end up carrying scars on your soul – if you care.” 

How is his soul? 

“Fairly scarred.” 

But that’s not why he’s left Rudding Park. That has far more to do with wanting to spend more time with his family, whom he feels he has neglected for decades. He says: 

“My eldest son is 28 and I’ve spent one Christmas with him. That’s how much dedication you need to this job. It crucifies you. I’ll never ever have that chance again. 

“To work as hard as I have for 38 years, you need to want it and need it in equal measure, because you have to sacrifice so much. I still want it, because I still love the industry, but I don’t need it. My kids are grown up and ‘off the payroll’, so that’s it. Happy days. Somebody else can work Christmas Day.” 

Still only 55, he’s not planning on retiring completely. A second career as a hospitality consultant beckons, and he’s already got “nine or 10” projects to consider. 

But for the time being, he’s taking a three-month break, and today is handing out those books. But why has he chosen Shane? He says: 

“It’s all in the final paragraph. Answering the question of who Shane was, it says ‘He was the man who rode into our little valley out of the heart of the great glowing West, and when his work was done, rode back whence he had come, and he was Shane’.

“I sometimes feel that I’m the Shane of the hospitality world. I rode into this little valley, not meaning to stay here as long as I did, but my job is done now. 

“It’s a young man’s game.” 

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Knaresborough pharmacy urges people to come forward for covid vaccine

A Knaresborough pharmacy director has urged people to come forward for a covid vaccine and warned that the virus is “still out there”.

Homecare Pharmacy Services took over the Harrogate Masonic Hall in October to offer covid vaccines to those eligible.

Despite a busy beginning, managing director Jason Baskind said the number of people using the service quickly “died down”.

He added:

“We were really busy for the first two weeks – it was good initially — but people need to be reminded that covid is still out there.”

The pharmacy played a key role in the pandemic after the NHS requested its help to roll-out the vaccine.

It moved to Chain Lane Community Hub and the former Lidl site in Knaresborough to administer more than 200,000 vaccinations.

Mr Baskind feels a change in attitude towards the virus has contributed to the slow uptake. He said:

“I think people have learned to live with it. There was a sense of panic when it was first rolled out and a stipulation to get it – which people did.

“Now, there’s potentially a sense of apathy in terms of the vaccine, but why not take the opportunity to get it?”

Appointments for a covid vaccine can be made on the NHS  national booking website.

Those currently eligible for the covid vaccine include people aged 65 and over, frontline healthcare workers, and high-risk individuals living with health conditions.

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Harrogate mums launch baby classes to tackle covid impact on education

Two Harrogate mums have launched parent and child classes to combat the impact of covid on local education.

Fiona Cunningham, who teaches at Rigg Farm Montessori Nursery, and Charlotte Davison, who teaches at Grove Road Community Primary School, felt the pandemic stunted young childrens’ speech and language development, as well as “overall school readiness”.

Early Explorer classes will offer sensory story time sessions improve communication and speech skills ahead of starting school.

Ms Cunningham said:

“Having had children of our own we are hoping to provide something we felt was missing in this area.

“As passionate teachers and mums, we noticed the impact that covid had on children’s development in terms of speech and language. We wanted to use our teaching skills and experience to support families and children in the area to inspire a love of learning through sensory stories and experiences.”

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The pair hope the classes will help children better understand narratives, increase vocabulary and cognitive development.

Ms Cunningham added:

“In our classes, stories come to life through a symphony of sights, sounds, textures and scents.

“Through carefully curated tales, interactive props, soothing music and tactile elements, children will embark on a journey of exploration and imagination.”

Once established, Ms Cunningham and Ms Davison hope to offer maths and writing classes too.

“We are so excited to be starting this new project and have enjoyed meeting our first Early Explorers in the recent weeks and can’t wait to welcome even more of you to our sensory story time classes!”

Early Explorers will be held at Staveley & Copgrove Village Hall on Monday mornings, and at Killinghall Village Hall on Friday mornings.

The classes are suitable for parents with babies and children up to the age of 4. Prices start at £9.

Pateley Bridge grocery store to cease trading after 40 years

A grocery store and bakery in Pateley Bridge will open its doors for the last time this weekend after 40 years of trading.

Park View Stores opened in the 1980s and has since supplied Nidderdale with everyday essentials, as well as homemade breads, sweet treats and takeaway sandwiches.

Karen Seale, who co-owns the company with her family, said the store has not been ‘financially viable’ since the pandemic.

She added:

“Sadly, the business has become very financially challenging.

“Much like other businesses we’ve seen footfall drop massively – everything has changed since covid.”

Ms Seale’s parents, Dorothy Wilson and her late husband Malcolm, bought the unit, which was formerly a sweet shop, over four decades ago.

She added:

“We’ve all worked in it for the majority of its life.

“My brother and I have worked in the shop since we were teenagers – even just helping stacking shelves on weekends.”

Ms Seale said the business has been up for sale for over two years, but they haven’t yet found a buyer.

She told the Stray Ferret her family has been overwhelmed by the support they have received since announcing the closure.

“Customers have been really sad about the closure – I think we’re the only people some customers speak to in a day.

“We’re very grateful to all our customers, suppliers and employees who have been supported us for all these years.”

Park View Stores will trade for the last time this Saturday.

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Harrogate headteacher releases book on school leadership

The headteacher of Harrogate’s largest school has released a book about leadership.

Neil Renton, who became head of Harrogate Grammar School in 2019, said New School Leader: What Now? aims to help school leaders daunted by their role.

It examines the challenges new leaders face and how they can be overcome.

Mr Renton, who was previously the school’s deputy head, said “this was the one book I looked for when I became a headteacher that I couldn’t find”.

Based on his own experience, it covers issues such as the weight of responsibility he felt on his appointment, leading through a pandemic and coping with an Ofsted inspection.

Mr Renton said:

“Something happens when you step from being a senior leader to being appointed as headteacher. Everyone tells you it will feel different, but no one can quite explain how.

“I found it helpful to write about my experience and what I was learning as a leader. I then tried to set that learning out in a way that could help other new leaders.

“I wanted to tell a simple, honest and positive story about school leadership.”

He said he wrote 500 words a day in every school holiday for the last three years “until I felt that I had answered the question in the title of the book New School Leader: What Now?”

Critical Publishing, which published the 210-page book, described it as “an uplifting and honest story about how school leaders develop and hone their practice over time to navigate doubt, overcome challenge, and lead well every day”.

The book, which costs £19.99, can be bought here.

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Harrogate bar to permanently keep covered outdoor area

District Bar in Harrogate is to keep its covered outdoor seating area constructed during covid.

The bar opened on Cold Bath Road in September 2019, just a few months before the town’s hospitality industry was turned on its head by covid.

Like many other bars and restaurants during the pandemic, District Bar was granted approval by the council to erect a semi-permanent metal structure on its patio to allow customers to sit outside.

Not only did the covered area allow customers to sit away from each other during covid restrictions, it also became a dry and warm space during the winter months and helped to block out noise from the bar onto the street.

Last week North Yorkshire Council approved a planning application to see the structure remain on the site for good.

The council has stipulated the area must close by 9pm when customers have to move inside.

District Bar

How it previously looked

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Planning documents submitted by the owner of District Bar said:

“Following a well received launch we were then, like the rest of the world, thrust into the unknown with covid and the challenges it brought.

“Like many other small local businesses, we struggled to exist and get through it. But we consider ourselves part of the local fabric and community, and to that end received tremendous support from local public.

“In 2020, since we couldn’t operate inside due to covid restrictions, we applied and received permission for a ‘semi-permanent’ structure to be erected on our patio connected to the bar.

“What we have found since its erection, is we disrupt our local community even less than we did before since noise is no longer an issue (prior we had people outside talking till 9pm) and as well as that an area where people still sceptical of covid and contagion can distance them selves from our main inside bar area.

“It has created a warm and cosy area for people to still keep safe distances.”

Harrogate estate agency blames pandemic as it goes into liquidation

A Harrogate estate agency founded 14 years ago has gone into liquidation, blaming difficult trading conditions during the pandemic.

Hopkinsons Estate Agents, a trading name of Howroyd Estates Limited, went into insolvent liquidation yesterday, Monday, June 5, according to a notice in The Gazette today.

The Harrogate-based business was founded in 2009 and Jeremy Hopkinson had been the sole director since 2015.

He has applied to continue using the trading name of Hopkinsons Estate Agents and has vowed to continue trading with his existing team.

Mr Hopkinson told the Stray Ferret:

“Howroyd Estates Limited has entered voluntary liquidation due to trading difficulties during the pandemic period.

“A deal has been agreed to acquire the business to continue to trade as Hopkinsons Estate Agents.

“There are no staff redundancies and the business will continue to offer its quality services to its existing and new clients.”

Mr Hopkinson was seriously ill with covid in the early days of the pandemic and required a lengthy stay in hospital. He then suffered from long covid for a further 18 months.

The company has also been the victim of an alleged fraud, in which a couple are said to have claimed to be wealthy in order to make financial gains.

A warrant was issued for the couple’s arrest at the end of last month after they failed to appear at York Crown Court.

Holroyd Estates’ most recent accounts show debts of just over £550,000, up from £162,000 in 2018.

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Covid vaccine clinics to be held in Knaresborough this month

Covid booster clinics will take place in Knaresborough this month, starting tomorrow.

Homecare Pharmacy will operate pop-up clinics at Unit 1 Grimbald Crag Court on St James Business Park in the town.

The clinic will be aimed at those who are vulnerable or aged 75 and over.

Appointments will also be held for those who are aged 18 and over and missed any primary doses.

The centre will be open from 9am until 3pm on the following dates:

Those eligible for a covid vaccine can book an appointment at the clinic here.

Covid vaccinations are now being held mostly in GP and pharmacies.

Health officials in North Yorkshire said last month more covid vaccine appointments would be available for residents in the Harrogate area following concern over a lack of nearby clinics.

Those eligible for a spring covid booster are advised to check the NHS booking service online or call 119.

More information on covid vaccine appointments can be found on the NHS England website here.

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