Security had been scaled back, CCTV cameras were inoperable and the water main had been disconnected at Warbreck House in the run up to a suspected arson attack there, it can be revealed.
But the owner of the site off Warbreck Hill Road in Bispham, where thousands of civil servants working for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) were based until last June, has pointed the finger elsewhere - blaming the council, government and water company United Utilities.
Pipesafe, which lost £30m last year, according to accounts filed with Companies House, and says it has defaulted on a £16m loan, insists it was forced to cut costs at the vast, empty complex after being given a business rates bill of around £1m by the local authority.
It claims the DWP left the site with only two working surveillance cameras out of more than a dozen, with the remaining pair malfunctioning shortly afterwards.
And it says the water was stopped without its knowledge after a leak - and was only turned on in the aftermath of last month’s blaze.
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In another claim, a spokeswoman for Pipesafe, a special purpose vehicle linked to high-profile property tycoon Robert Tchenguiz, says it has called in lawyers to investigate the cause of the fire and does “not believe it was simply vandals”.
She said: “We have not yet received the investigation report but we were told by a member of the fire department on site that the fire was started in the roof (the building is 2-3 storeys) and that three incendiary locations had been found.
“We were also told a flare had been found in trees on the side of the property. Not only are flares expensive but they need to be fired from a flare gun, which in the UK a licence is required.
“We believe whoever started the fire knew exactly what they were doing.”
The Blackpool Lead has spoken to all sides involved in the war of words, as well as those involved in Operation Merlin - the mammoth fire-fighting effort that started when flames were first spotted tearing through the 250,000 sq ft building at about 11.30pm on Friday June 7.
The DWP has declined to comment, while the council, which has hit Pipesafe with a community protection warning (CPW) and could prosecute if it does not believe measures to properly protect the site have been put in place, said it is not its job to secure private property.
Some facts are undisputed; all parties agree Warbreck House had in recent months become a magnet for thieves and intruders and that security cover had been reduced, cameras were not working and the water supply had been turned off.
Other claims are more contentious, however.
Pipesafe: We tried everything
Pipesafe says it tried “everything” to keep the DWP at Warbreck House, given it was paying £4m a year in rent, but could not agree to the terms put forward by the government department.
It also claims the government plotted to turn the site into accommodation for asylum seekers - before it found out and refused for fear of a public backlash.
And it says the council withdrew from talks about redeveloping the site and then suggested buying it for “an amount less than the mortgage with the lenders”.
Round-the-clock security was “maintained until Blackpool Council made it clear that they were not co-operating on redevelopment of the site and instead were trying to obtain the site at under market value for their own ownership by pushing the freeholding company into insolvency”, Pipesafe told The Blackpool Lead.
After the council allegedly demanded £1m in business rates, the firm said it “simply could not raise any additional funds” and was forced to minimise costs at the empty property, which it said was costing £60,000-70,000 a month in 24/7 security and utilities.
From March 12, a sole security officer was tasked with guarding the site - from the old driving test centre nearby - from 6am to 4pm from Monday to Friday only, though Pipesafe said he also “attended … when notified of concerns because he lives locally (police had his number)”.
The immediate aftermath of the fire. Credit: The Blackpool Lead/Michael Holmes
Lancashire Police, which had been using the vacated site for firearms and dog-training purposes, also stopped working there earlier this year - and petty criminals and trespassers took advantage.
“There were several break-ins - copper pipes were stolen and windows broken,” Pipesafe’s spokeswoman said.
“We were in the process of boarding up downstairs windows (many had been done) before the fire. The 3m fence (which has barbed wire at the top) was repaired any time it was damaged.”
Concerns were also raised by neighbours, ward councillors Dave Flanagan and Julie Jones said. “Deep concerns, frustration and anger” were voiced about the “lack of security provision, protection for residents and the general health and safety of the perimeter and building itself”, they said in a joint statement.
The water supply was switched off on April 24, Pipesafe said, after United Utilities “could not locate” the source of a leak, which The Lead has been told may have been caused by pipework being stolen.
“As the building was vacant, (they) suggested turning off the water inside the building,” the landowner said.
“As it turns out, however, there is a separate ‘ring’ for the property and the water company turned water to the ring off. We were only made aware of this at the on-site meeting with emergency services following the major fire, which the water company attended as well.
“We gave no instructions for any primary source to the property to be switched off.”
United Utilities said: “Due to internal leakage in Warbreck House, the supply was turned off. Our teams attended when called out by the fire service to restore the supply.”
Firefighters, who often have plans in place to deal with fires at prominent, vacant buildings, had become aware of the lack of water, said Trevor Jenkins, Lancashire Fire and Rescue’s service delivery manager for the Blackpool district, and were able to prepare accordingly.
Crews managed well on June 2, when a smaller fire broke out at Warbreck House.
Water was a massive issue
But “water was a massive issue” at the height of June 7’s blaze, which took several days to put out, Jenkins said.
He added: “When all is said and done, although it was an unoccupied building - there was no furniture in there - the fire spread very, very quickly.
“We got called at about 11.30pm; I was stood in Bispham Road at 2am thinking, ‘We are going to lose the whole building’.
“I have never seen fire spread so quickly. The wind was helping it and it was travelling through the roof and radiating down. The smoke coming off it was incredible.”
The emergency response was immense. Firefighting crews from across Lancashire were dispatched to the scene, while the ambulance service, police, council and Environment Agency were all involved, too.
Officials gathered for regular meetings and, at 3am on the Sunday, contemplated evacuating residents living at the back of the building, where the fire is thought to have started.
It was only the wind direction - which took the thick plumes of smoke and flurries of embers across the site’s empty car park instead - that spared them an urgent awakening.
Firefighters were initially kept from going into the burning building for fear it could collapse or contain dangerous asbestos (it later became clear that the once widely used building material was mostly removed in the 1990s), but there was a real concern that somebody may have been inside.
“So I’m thinking, ‘It’s unoccupied - you could have rough sleepers in there’,” Jenkins said.
“I did not discount that. It was persons reported,” he said, referring to the terminology used by the fire service for priority calls when someone may be in danger or unaccounted for during an incident.
“We were there for seven or eight days. Throughout that whole emergency phase and recovery phase, it stayed persons reported.”
By the time locals climbed from their beds on Saturday morning, the fire appeared to be largely under control, in no small part thanks to 30,000l water tankers from United Utilities and huge hoses snaking through the streets and up Warbreck Hill Road and across the busy Devonshire Road to the appropriate hydrants.
The main inconvenience suffered by those living and travelling nearby was the closure of the busy Plymouth Road/Warbreck Hill Road/Holyoake Avenue junction.
The next day, however, a hotspot reignited, and Warbreck House became a hive of emergency service activity once more.
There was a risk that the nearby Unity Academy, which is a nursery and primary and secondary school all rolled into one, would not be able to open on the Monday, though there ended up being no impact.
In the days that followed, firefighters kept a presence at Warbreck House, which was checked for human remains by a cadaver dog, while police kept an eye on missing person reports, Jenkins said.
Among the biggest in Blackpool’s history
He said the fire is “up there” with the biggest in Blackpool’s history, alongside Yates’s in Talbot Square in 2009 and Grab City on the Prom in 2002.
“With this one, it went on for seven or eight days,” he said.
“The building is unique in its size. There’s three main corridors and if you walk them, it’s something like 1.5 miles. It’s massive.”
Jenkins said the investigation into the fire continues, with police remaining open-minded about the cause.
Lancashire Police did not comment on Pipesafe’s own suspicions as to what happened to its building - which had fallen in value from £26m to £10m because no rent was coming in - but said inquiries are ongoing.
Pipesafe said the DWP’s decades-long lease at Warbreck House matured in 2019 and was extended for four years. With plans to move into a new office in the town centre, the government asked for a short-term extension “on wholly uneconomic terms” that were refused, the company said.
In the 18 months before the DWP eventually left the site on June 23 2023 - with civil servants temporarily moved to Ryscar House in Bispham, Peel Park in Marton and shared offices with the NHS at Hesketh House in Fleetwood - Pipesafe said it engaged with the council about the future of the site.
Development options included a special needs school, community sporting facilities, commercial facilities including retail, medical and childcare, and a mix of low-cost affordable and private housing, the firm said.
But talks dragged on and faltered, with Pipesafe claiming that in November town hall chiefs “admitted they had tried to ‘box us in’ so as to acquire the property themselves” on the cheap.
The spokeswoman said: “We would have been quite happy to sell them the property but could only do so at an amount sufficient to repay the lender.”
Damage at Warbreck House. Credit: The Blackpool Lead/Michael Holmes
Amid a national hunt for suitable accommodation, she also accused the government of putting forward plans to house migrants at Warbreck House.
“We were approached by the government to use the site for asylum seekers,” she said.
“We were given a full report which they had commissioned. Unknown to us at the time, DWP had given access for the report to be carried out.”
Pipesafe said that, “within days” of being made aware of the plans, it told the council and the resort’s two then-MPs and was warned “not to pursue it as it would be strenuously opposed”.
Pipesafe said it had “expressed concern” to the council “about the vacant site following a DWP departure and these concerns were ventilated repeatedly as progress continued to be delayed”.
It added: “It was made very clear to the local council that unless future use of the site was agreed, maintaining a secured site would be financially impossible for the company.
“When DWP vacated the property they ignored the repair requests and failed to repair the property, which meant it was incapable of being occupied by any other tenant; we obtained a dilapidations report showing circa £4m of repairs are required.”
“The owners are responsible.”
A Blackpool Council spokesperson said: “Owners of private property are responsible for fulfilling their obligations in respect of their property.
“These responsibilities remain irrespective of any conversations that may have taken place with council officers about the possibilities of future development.
“The council remains willing to discuss any reasonable form of development that the owners may wish to bring forward.”
The DWP declined to respond to Pipesafe’s claims.
The water supply at Warbreck House has now been restored.
Security there has also been bolstered, Pipesafe said: two additional full-time security guards have been drafted in; a working CCTV system has been installed, as has a motion-detecting intruder alarm; and a risk assessment has been carried out, with a portable cabin removed because people were said to be using it to help them scale perimeter fencing.
Those measures are being “funded independently of the company” because its directors “were threatened with criminal sanctions” by the council, Pipesafe’s spokeswoman said.
That threat came in the form of the CPW, issued under the Anti-Social Behaviour Crime and Police Act 2014, which relates to the following areas of concern: site security, no CCTV, no 24-hour security, no water in the ring main and issues related to trespass, criminal damage and arson.
The legislation allows the local authority to formally warn Pipesafe. The next step would be a community protection notice which, if breached, would allow the council to prosecute.
“The advice we have so far is that the threats are baseless but we have in any event taken this very unusual step until matters are resolved,” Pipesafe said.
Flanagan and Jones, Labour’s councillors for the Greenlands ward, said in their statement that earlier, ignored calls to satisfactorily improve security measures led to a “devastating evening of uncertainty and fear for those who lived nearby”.
They added: “It is deeply disappointing that we find ourselves in this position and frustrating for all concerned that our community has been put at risk and our emergency services put in danger because of poor decision-making.
“That said, as a result of the recent interventions from both the council and the emergency services, 24-hour manned security has returned (and) round-the-clock CCTV and intruder systems (have been) installed.
“This has had a significant impact on levels of anti-social behaviour and provided additional protection and reassurance to residents.”
While the long-term future of Warbreck House remains uncertain, in the short term it will be partially demolished for safety purposes, its owner says.
But worry remains about the potential for further damage.
Since the fire, there have been eight reports made to police about alleged trouble there, with a group of youths recently frogmarched home after being challenged by officers nearby, The Blackpool Lead understands.
Jenkins, from the fire service, said: “I think any derelict building has the potential to be set alight and I would not discount Warbreck House in that.”
He appealed for people to be vigilant, including parents, who may not know what their children are getting up to while out of the house.
And to any would-be intruders, including those who have filmed themselves sifting through the debris and fire damage, with footage appearing on YouTube, he issued a plea to stay away.
“It’s unsafe and there’s hazards in there,” he said.
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