Developer behind planned £100m resort declared bankrupt

The property developer behind collapsed plans to develop a £100m hotel resort in North Yorkshire is bankrupt.

Darren Broadbent was a director of Skelwith Leisure, the company behind the failed Flaxby resort plans that had ambitions to create a 300-bed golf hotel and resort.

The High Court made the order on Monday and his bankruptcy status will be automatically discharged after a year.

Skelwith Leisure, a subsidiary of the Skelwith Group, went into liquidation in September 2015 following a legal dispute over ownership of the site near Knaresborough.

Creditors’ claims totalled £90m, with HMRC owed £51.5m for unpaid VAT, interest and penalties. Liquidators sold the site for £10m to a new company, Flaxby Park Limited, who have put forward plans for a new village on the site.

Skelwith Leisure initially launched plans in the early 2000s and planning permission was granted in 2010. However after the construction of a £4m roundabout to provide access to the site, construction slowed to a standstill by 2014.

In November 2014 Skelwith Leisure announced that the golf resort had been scrapped, saying it would not be profitable.

Farming family the Armstrongs, who sold the land to the developers in 2008, were unhappy with subsequent changes to the original plan to turn the site into a fully-fledged hotel resort.

Instead developers proposed a whole new town for the Flaxby site, which the Armstrongs objected to.

However, weeks after it started the application, Skelwith Leisure went into liquidation.