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?” 

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.” 

Read more:

• Rudding Park to open fine-dining restaurant
• Rudding Park’s managing director Peter Banks to retire
• Harrogate’s Rudding Park expansion approved

In an anonymous-looking office in south-east London, a handful of thirtysomethings are racking their brains to come up with a sensible plan for the future use of Harrogate Convention Centre (HCC). 

The exercise to “explore opportunities in the marketplace and appraise the best options for taking the venue forward” comes after North Yorkshire Council (NYC) decided last month to abandon the proposed £57 million development of HCC, citing complexities and costs. 

The centre needs investment, and it currently relies on a £2.7 million subsidy. Two applications for grant funding from the government have failed, so new thinking is needed.  

As the Stray Ferret revealed this week, North Yorkshire taxpayers are handing the team from London consultancy 31ten £23,000 plus VAT for the “soft market testing” project, which is due to conclude by “late spring”. So what might the consultants suggest? 

A report for the council’s ruling executive that took the decision to ditch the redevelopment stated: 

“Options may include, but are not limited to, alternative delivery and funding models, partnership working, alternative uses for parts of the site, and asset ownership.” 

In other words the council, which is looking to make serious savings over the coming years, is open to pretty much any suggestion, so long as it sounds viable. Everything, it seems, is on the table. 

In January, the Stray Ferret discovered the council had already spoken to private companies about the possibility of selling the convention centre. 

Council chief executive Richard Flinton told Harrogate District Chamber of Commerce that the council wanted to “understand private sector interest in the building” although he added “that doesn’t necessarily mean the council will look to offload it”. 

A more likely scenario could see parts of the site sold off, rather than the whole thing. That’s an option Simon Kent would be tempted to take. Mr Kent worked at Harrogate Convention Centre for 15 years from 2004, leaving in 2019 after more than six years as director. He told the Stray Ferret: 

“The main part of the convention centre is integrated, with parts of it underground, so you couldn’t knock bits of it down. But the exhibition halls are different. If some events were moved elsewhere, those could potentially be sold and redeveloped for other uses.  

“So perhaps there could be an option to move some of the events to the Great Yorkshire Showground and connect them to Harrogate via a shuttle bus. Whatever happens, we need to keep events coming to the town, even if they don’t come to Harrogate Convention Centre. From an economic point of view, the business would remain in Harrogate, so the impact would still be there.

“Clearly, the business is important to the town, so we have to be creative and make sure it stays in the town.” 

The business is indeed important to the town – it’s estimated to be worth £45 million a year to the local economy – which is why the council is looking at some radical options. 

Not many are as radical as the one suggested to the Stray Ferret by Andrew Williams. As North Yorkshire councillor for Ripon Minster and Moorside, he’s long been vehemently opposed to using public money to prop up the convention centre, which he believes is of no benefit to taxpayers beyond Harrogate. He told us: 

“I very much welcome North Yorkshire Council’s decision not to go ahead with investing £57m – more than the original £33m cost of building it – in what I think is a white elephant. It would be very helpful to get some private equity investment in so that it wasn’t as much of a drain on public finances.” 

He thinks the convention centre should put its money on a more imaginative approach. He said: 

“When conventions aren’t taking place, it should be used for more leisure activities. I’ve always thought a casino would be a good idea. 

“York has considerable trade in bachelor and hen weekends – go out in York on a weekend evening and it’s packed with young visitors – but Harrogate doesn’t have any of that, because there’s nothing to attract them. 

“Harrogate should be marketing itself as a destination for leisure activities in a way it clearly isn’t at the moment.” 

The idea of repurposing some of the site already has currency, albeit not yet in the form of casino chips. Paula Lorimer, director of the the convention centre, would like to reconfigure some of the conference rooms to create breakout space, a move she believes could bring in an extra £1 million a year. 

The Stray Ferret contacted Ms Lorimer – who, with an annual salary of £121,818 was recently revealed to be one of this district’s best paid public servants – for this article many times over the course of more than a month, but she did not reply.

Paula Lorimer, director of Harrogate Convention Centre

Failing these options – selling it off, selling off parts of it, or repurposing it – there is another route the consultants could go down. Partnership working can yield benefits all round, allowing each party to play to their strengths. It’s an approach tentatively favoured by Kim Wilson, co-owner of The Camberley B&B, which is just across King’s Road from the convention centre. She said: 

“Parts of the convention could possibly be run by other bodies – for example, the Royal Hall could easily be run by Harrogate Theatre – so we’ll just have to see what’s out there. 

“It really comes down to what we want the convention to be. Is it a public asset with government support, or is it better as a privately-owned venture that goes out chasing business more aggressively? 

“My husband thinks it should be a protected asset, but I’m less fixed in my view. If it does get a partner in, they’ll have to be very careful when they’re choosing them – it’s about getting the right fit.” 

For Paula Lorimer and her team, what to do with a convention centre faced with unprecedented competition from – among others – London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, Brighton and Blackpool is clearly a conundrum worth spending money to solve. 

But for Simon Kent, who has been entrusted with the archives of late local historian Malcolm Neesam, it all seems quite familiar. He said: 

“This isn’t the first time the convention centre has come to this point – there have been lots of exercises like this. In 1990-91, it looked at getting private-sector investment – it was the first thing the Liberal Democrats did when they got in. Then in 2000 there was another effort to get funding through Yorkshire Forward.

“People often think it all started in 1982 when the conference centre opened, but we were doing conferences and trade fairs in Harrogate as far back as the 1880s, so it was the natural thing to invest in that as the spa industry declined.

“It’s still a viable business, and people clearly still like coming to Harrogate, so it must have something. It’s just a matter of understanding what that is and capitalising on it.”

Read more:

• Exclusive: Council spent £1.9m on consultants for scrapped Harrogate Convention Centre plans
• Harrogate residents say convention centre visitors stealing parking spaces
• Council predicts positive future for Harrogate Convention Centre despite scrapping £57m redevelopment

Ripon’s food and drink hotspot may see a new hospitality business arriving in the New Year following the submission of a planning application to North Yorkshire Council.

The application for a change of use would, if approved, see the former offices of Newtons Solicitors at 4 Duck Hill turned into a restaurant and hot food takeaway.

The potential operator is un-named in the application which, if successful, would see the restaurant and takeaway using the ground and upper floor of the building.

The Silva Bells restaurant opened in March

It has been a busy year for property deals in this part of the city, with the Bikemongers off-road cycling retailer relocating last week to 2 Kirkgate, from its former base on Duck Hill and transactions that saw two new hospitality business open.

The Silva Bells opened in March in premises formerly occupied by the Bambudda Asian fusion restaurant at 23-25 Kirkgate and further up the street, The Portly Pig bottleshop and taproom, owned by Adam Coulson, opened in September in a historic building that was previously home to the Oasis florists and, before that, the Ripon Gazette newspaper office.

Main picture: The premises at 4 Duck Hill have been vacant since Newtons Solicitors relocated to Market Place South

Read more:

• New restaurant adds to Ripon’s hospitality offer
• Bottleshop and taproom opens in historic Ripon premises