Lancaster hotel apologises after "serious defect" leads to road closure

A Lancaster hotel has apologised to everyone who was affected by work being carried out on the building after a "serious defect" was found.

The Royal Kings Arms Hotel has issued a statement after engineers discovered the defect in one of the major support beams shared between the hotel and the nearby former Waterstones book shop.

A traffic lane on King Street had to be closed so work could be carried out, which caused chaos for motorists. The road restriction was lifted earlier today.

"We would like to take this opportunity to offer our sincerest apologies to everyone affected by the work being carried out on our building," said the statement on the Royal Kings Arms Facebook page.

"Unfortunately, last Thursday March 10 2022, structural engineers discovered a large defect in one of the major support beams shared between Waterstones and ourselves.

"Such was the seriousness of the fault, we were ordered to close all of the rooms directly above this area.

"Sadly this included the ballroom where a number of functions were booked and a number of our rooms.

"The council also issued a road closure order on the same advice which caused a great deal of inconvenience to many people. For this we apologise.

"As we are sure everyone can appreciate, the safety of our guests, our staff and the general public are of the utmost importance to us and therefore we had no option but to follow the guidelines set out by the Health and Safety Executive.

"Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused and trust that we are doing all we can to return to normal operations as soon as it is safe to do so."