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Hilton Hotel development at Fletton Quays

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Latest news - hotel sale completed

On 4 August 2026, the sale of the unfinished hotel at Fletton Quays was completed. Leisure & Co Hotel Ltd has acquired the hotel and will open the property as Hilton Garden Inn Peterborough in summer 2027.

Managed by Leaf Hospitality, it will offer 160 guest rooms, a restaurant and bar, meeting facilities, fitness amenities and a ninth-floor rooftop terrace with views across the River Nene and Peterborough Cathedral.

The hotel is expected to create around 60 local job opportunities, supporting Peterborough’s visitor economy and adding to the wider impact of the Fletton Quays regeneration scheme.

Project background

In September 2017, we agreed to provide capital funding (borrowed money) for the construction of the 160-room Fletton Quays Hilton Hotel. This was by way of loan of up to £15m to Fletton Quays Hotel Ltd, the development company leading on the development of the hotel.

The hotel site is part of our flagship regeneration project in Fletton Quays, which comprises of:

  • Our headquarters Sand Martin House
  • 229 apartments
  • A multi-storey car park
  • Government Hub / Passport Office

Further development on this site includes:

  • The new Cygnet Bridge
  • Additional apartments
  • A food and beverage operator in the Goods Shed

The hotel development was significantly delayed due to a slowdown in the construction industry during and following Covid and Brexit. Work on-site slowed in May 2023 and then stopped. The developer was put into administration on 17 October 2023.

At a meeting on 30 May 2024, Cabinet Members agreed to submit a credit bit for the hotel up to the value of our loan. We did not complete the credit bid and the hotel remained in the hands of the administrators, Teneo.

In the meantime, we undertook soft market testing to understand if there was any interest from those who may look to purchase the hotel. There were a number of expressions of interest.

At a Cabinet meeting on 15 October 2024, Cabinet Members approved the transfer of the hotel from the administrators to a preferred bidder. This sale fell through.

A recommendation on the next steps for the Hilton Hotel project went before Cabinet Members on 2 October 2025. As we were the primary secured creditor to the company that was in administration (Fletton Quays Hotel Ltd), the recommendation made to Cabinet was to direct the administrators to market and sell the Hilton Hotel site and to commit them to ensuring any sale of the site achieved best value. This recommendation was a result of the latest independent advice we received and investigations that were carried out, including the estimated costs for completion, the financial risks for the council in completing the hotel, and the specialist skillsets that would be required to develop and maximise such a specialist asset holding.

The Cabinet’s decision to follow the recommendation was ‘called-in’ for further consideration. A ‘call-in’ is a key element of the scrutiny function. It relates to the rights of councillors to call-in for examination an executive decision that has been made but not yet implemented. Three councillors must sign a call-in request. This call-in request wase made by Cllr John Howard, Cllr Marco Cereste and Cllr Alex Rafiq.

An Extraordinary meeting of the Sustainable Future City Council Scrutiny Committee took place on 20 October 2025. The committee heard the reasons for the call-in and debated next steps. Members of the committee decided to take no further action in relation to the Cabinet decision of 2 October 2025. The original decision remained.

On 10 November 2025, CBRE, acting as selling agents for the administrators, commenced the marketing for the partly completed Hilton Hotel. The sales period ran until the middle of January 2026. Council officers met with CBRE and the administrators to discuss the bids received. These meetings were commercially confidential.

Cabinet reports and papers

You can read more about this project in the following Cabinet agenda papers from previous meetings:

Frequently asked questions

This is a question for either the administrators, Teneo, or the buyer to answer. However, we know that the sale price will be confirmed in the Joint Administrators’ next progress report to creditors which will be filed during mid-November 2026.

We understand why residents are asking for this information, as it helps them to establish how much taxpayers' money has been lost. However, the sale price alone will not give them this information and that is because the sale of the hotel is only one indicator of how much money the council will see returned and therefore how much will need to be written-off. There is ongoing activity in relation to the wind-up of the company that the council took into administration which will determine this.

In the fullness of time, these figures will be made public, which we are required to do under accountancy regulations and because it is also the right thing for us to do as an organisation which has committed to transparency.

The council has already made an initial estimate of its credit loss as required by accounting rules and this was included in the accounts for 2024/25. This will need to be further reviewed as part of the 2025/26 accounts process. No interest payments will require write-off as they were written off in 2023/24.

View the Peterborough City Council Statement of Accounts 2024-25 Final (opens PDF).

We cannot assume at this point the value of any further write-off as we don’t know the final figures from the administrators. This is because the disposal is only one part of the winding up of the company that entered administration.

Leisure & Co Hotel Ltd has acquired the hotel and will open the property as Hilton Garden Inn Peterborough in summer 2027. Managed by Leaf Hospitality, it will offer 160 guest rooms, a restaurant and bar, meeting facilities, fitness amenities and a ninth-floor rooftop terrace with views across the River Nene and Peterborough Cathedral. The hotel is also expected to create around 60 local job opportunities, supporting Peterborough’s visitor economy and adding to the wider impact of the Fletton Quays regeneration scheme.

It is important to understand the background, in that when the loan was agreed for this development the world was a different place. Covid could not have been anticipated and the impact this and other factors would have on financial markets. Without these events, which could not have been predicted, it is likely the hotel would now be open and our loan repaid. There is the question over whether we should have loaned the money in the first place, and we are aware that there are differing views on this. In addition, since then various governments have changed the rules around commercial investments by councils making it much more difficult for such arrangements to comply with these new rules. 

It was concluded, following detailed studies and expert advice, that developing the hotel to completion and operating it was not in the council’s best interests owing to the additional costs this would incur and the risks involved.

Cabinet did consider this option, however a feasibility study carried out by experts Willmott Dixon and further detailed business case modelling which included indicative costs, risks and a timeline to complete, supported the council to conclude that this was the more risky and costly option.  More debt taking would have been required and income volatility in the early years of any new facility would bring a high level of financial risk for the council and further costs, when our priorities lie elsewhere.

As a result, Cabinet instructed the administrators to sell the asset for best value. This will now see some of the money we have spent being repaid.

Last updated: 13 August 2026
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