prepared

I stayed at a hotel that’s been branded one of the worst in the UK and for some reason decided that it would be a good idea to use a UV light in my windowless room

There aren’t that many hotels that charge £10 for windows or are seemingly completely empty the week before Christmas. And there’s only one hotel chain that has been named the worst in the UK for 12 consecutive years. To experience such delights, you’ve got to check yourself into a Britannia.

The chain is the stuff of legend. Fifty years after its first property, the Country House Hotel in Didsbury, Manchester, was opened, it has added around 60 more and grown to stretch across the UK before taking over Pontins.

However, its story is not an entirely positive one. Britannia has been much maligned over the years for (according to some of its unhappy customers at least) turning once grand properties into grimy, unpleasant, and uncomfortable hotels that don’t offer good value, even for their budget price tags.

My first experience in a Britannia came back in 2022, in the heady post-lockdown days when I took the train down to Bournemouth to stay in a hotel that has since been repurposed to house asylum seekers. The stuck fast windows and thick smell of paint ensured it was a hot and sticky night, while the drained outdoor pool, discarded knickers in the courtyard and a scattering of NOS canisters added to the general sense of neglect.

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OPINION

Milo Boyd

With such images in my head, it was with trepidation that I headed to my local Britannia to find out whether anything had changed at the UK’s worst hotel chain.

It hadn’t.

Britannia Hampstead is bleak, albeit in different ways to its sister venue down on the south coast. Here’s a breakdown of its key elements, compared to a recent visit to The Manor in Blakeney, North Norfolk. The Manor is part of the Coaching Inn Group, which was named the UK’s best large hotel chain of 2025 by Which? readers, while Britannia came dead last. Here is what separates the wheat from the chaff.

Vibe

On my Bournemouth trip, things were a lot livelier. There was life in the hotel. I knew because I could hear arguing couples and other people’s TV choices through my room walls. What I would’ve done for even the most muffled background characters this time around. The six-storey London hotel, which is big enough to house a 350-person business suite, was completely dead. The fairy lights flickered, but no one was home.

Contrastingly, the Manor was vibey. It may be a good hour’s cycle from the nearest train station, but even in the dead of November, it was busy, friendly, and warm. The staff were happy to chat, as were the guests lined up at the bar, enjoying special weekends away or a quick drink in what served as their local.

Rooms

It’s certainly not going to win any prizes, but my room in the Hampstead Britannia was much nicer than the Bournemouth one. In Bournemouth, a singular dead fly lay on the windowsill next to a deeply stained armchair. A screw stuck out from a picture frame. For several hours, I was unable to illuminate the room as all but the bathroom lights were out of action, leaving us with the deafeningly loud extractor fan until a cheery man on reception explained that the central electricity switch was hidden beneath the kettle.

In North London, the room was just… a bit bland. It was so clean that my UV torch found absolutely nothing. I can only assume that the strong stench of cleaning fluids had something to do with that. The furnishings were old and mostly brown, but inoffensive. At points during the night, the lack of windows did make me wonder if I was in prison. But I slept, woke and then jailbroke to tell the tale.

Over in Norfolk, it’s a different story. The Manor has 36 rooms, the cheapest of which can be booked for £99 next week. It is classic budget hotel fare, albeit of the quality end of the spectrum. A comfortable double bed, a medium-sized TV, and a well-decorated bathroom. Everything is solid, clean and cheerful.

Staff

As my only fellow humans in the Britannia hotel that night, I have no real complaints about the staff. They seemed nice enough, if not a little distracted when I chatted to them. The receptionist didn’t seem completely sure why the restaurant and bar were closed. Otherwise, my interactions with the staff were limited to them looking at me curiously as I read my book in the empty lobby.

Contrastingly, at the Manor, it’s all about staff. Many of them have been there for well over ten years. About half of them seem to be members of the Hill clan, including Tore, Karen, Sophie and Wayne. They were all on hand at various points during my stay to ensure everything was in its right place and to offer insights into the local area. For me, and the chatty returning customers who knew staff by name, such warmth is a major plus. It transforms the hotel from a place to stay and eat for the night, to somewhere homely that you want to be.

Location

This should be one of Britannia’s strong suits. In my mind, its customers tolerate a low-quality stay because of the convenience of staggering home to a city centre joint after a work away day or stag do. The Hampstead hotel offers none of that. It’s neither near enough the Heath nor Camden to be properly in either, and it’s a long old schlep from the centre of town. I can only imagine the disappointment of tourists who didn’t do enough research before booking.

Blakeney, on the other hand, is a lovely place. Just metres from the hotel’s front is the River Glaven, which winds its way through the National Nature Reserve. Nearby Blakeney Point is renowned for its seal colonies, with Beans Boat offering guided tours throughout the year. Most Coaching Inn Group hotels are in similarly scenic and remote rural locations.

Price

Windowless rooms at the London Britannia cost from £55, according to its website. But mine was closer to £90 with breakfast. If I’d opted for the sought-after window option, that would’ve hit the £100 mark.

The average cost of a room at the Manor is £128. While that isn’t very cheap, in the Which? survey, the hotel was one of only two to score four out of five stars for value for money. The other was Wetherspoons. I visited the Spoons Hotel in Canterbury in November, where a room for the night can be yours for just £55 and the average price is £70.

Spoons easily takes the prize for best value in my book, with Coaching Inn Group not far behind. Britannia, however, offers very little for what is a sizeable price tag. The average home price across all its hotels is £84, according to Which?. Even in 2025, that’s poor.

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OPINION

Milo Boyd

The verdict

Nothing about my stay at the Britannia convinced me that it’s on the up or going to shed its unwanted ‘worst in class’ title anytime soon. I’m sure it’ll bag the bottom spot for a thirteenth time next year.

Britannia’s model seems to be to buy up grand old properties and flog the rooms for cut-price rates. Such is the size of the buildings, renovating to a modern standard would be a costly and risky venture. Far better, I imagine its executives have assumed, to keep costs low, even if profits remain the same. As a result, it’s a franchise with dozens of worn-out buildings that consistently fail to delight.

Contrastingly, Coaching Inn Group is a company that has done things right. For virtually the same price, customers can stay in one of its charming hotels in a warm, comfortable room with staff that seem genuinely invested in their work. Really, there is no competition.

Britannia has been contacted for comment.

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As the Palisades fire raged, then-Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley went on a television blitz, calling out city leadership for systematically underfunding her agency.

The LAFD, she said, didn’t have enough firefighters, based at enough fire stations, to quench the wind-driven flames that were tearing through the hills.

“We need more. This is no longer sustainable,” she said in one interview Jan. 10.

Nearly a year after the fire destroyed much of the Palisades, LAFD officials continue to highlight financial concerns, with Crowley’s successor requesting a 15% budget increase and the firefighters union proposing a sales tax that could bring in an extra $300 million per year.

A Jan. 9 aerial view of neighborhoods destroyed by the Palisades fire.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

But the LAFD’s hyper-focus on money obscures its leaders’ failures in managing the resources they had, beginning with a decision to leave the scene of a New Year’s Day fire despite signs it hadn’t been fully extinguished.

Days later, that fire reignited into the Palisades fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes. Despite forecasts of catastrophically high winds, LAFD officials didn’t pre-deploy engines in the area or increase manpower by ordering a previous shift of firefighters to stay on duty.

As the flames spread, the firefighting response was disorganized and chaotic, with the LAFD’s own after-action report describing major failures by high-ranking commanders in communication, staffing and basic wildland firefighting knowledge.

City leaders have highlighted changes they have made since the fire, including appointing 30-year LAFD veteran Jaime Moore as chief and drafting new protocols for staffing on high hazard weather days.

But the question remains: Is Los Angeles prepared for the next major wildfire? Some city officials and fire experts don’t think so, pointing to an LAFD that hasn’t evolved with the times and an incomplete review of how the Palisades fire started.

Moore, who was appointed chief last month, declined to comment.

Mayor Karen Bass said in an interview earlier this month that the city is “on the path to be completely ready” for a major wildfire, with the LAFD now taking a more proactive approach to weather warnings.

“The Fire Department has been way more aggressive, has done pre-deployment, has been very visible, alerts going out early, trying to be very, very aggressive,” she said.

But Genethia Hudley Hayes, president of the Board of Fire Commissioners, said that the LAFD is still unprepared and that there hasn’t been enough time to make the necessary changes. She cited the LAFD’s technology, which she said is about two decades behind.

“I am not confident there would be a different result” if a similar disaster strikes, she said.

City Councilmember Traci Park, whose district includes Pacific Palisades and who has advocated for more Fire Department funding, agreed with Hudley Hayes.

Some essential changes have been made, such as requiring firefighters to stay for an additional shift during red flag warnings, Park said. But she said that too many fire engines are out of service, there are not enough mechanics, and most important, questions about the origin of the Palisades fire remain unanswered.

In October, after federal prosecutors charged a former Palisades resident with deliberately setting the Jan. 1 Lachman fire, The Times reported that a battalion chief ordered firefighters to roll up their hoses and leave the burn area on Jan. 2, even though they had complained that the ground was still smoldering and rocks remained hot to the touch. The Times reviewed text messages among firefighters and a third party, sent in the weeks and months after the fire, describing the crew’s concerns.

The LAFD’s after-action report, released in October, only briefly mentioned the Lachman fire. Critics have flagged this as a crucial lapse in the report, which prevents the department from figuring out what went wrong and avoiding the same mistakes.

After the Times report, Bass ordered an investigation into the LAFD’s handling of the Lachman fire.

Mayor Karen Bass, right, and then-Fire Chief Kristin Crowley speak during a news conference in January. Bass ousted Crowley less than two months after the Palisades fire.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Bass had ousted Crowley less than two months after the Palisades fire, citing the LAFD’s failure to properly deploy resources ahead of the winds and potentially have a chance to extinguish the fire before it exploded out of control, an issue that was exposed by a series of reports in The Times.

Bass also countered Crowley’s financial complaints, saying that the budget did not affect the department’s ability to fight the fire. The LAFD’s 2024-25 budget had actually increased 7% from the previous year, due in part to generous firefighter raises.

More money won’t solve bad decision-making by top officials, said Marc Eckstein, an emergency physician who served as LAFD’s medical director and commander of its emergency medical services bureau until he retired in 2021.

He said that without transparency and accountability, “the fallback is always going to be what it has been: We need more of everything — more people, more money, more fire trucks, more fire stations.”

A modern fire agency needs the flexibility to surge its staff during a disaster, he said, while also addressing day-to-day needs. Most 911 calls are for medical problems, he said, yet the LAFD functions more or less the same as it did decades ago, when structure fires were more common.

He said a panel of outside experts should have been given access to the LAFD’s records to offer an unbiased look at how the department performed leading up to and during the Palisades fire.

“And it’s a playbook. OK, how do we prevent this from happening again?” he said. “And the fact that didn’t happen is a disgrace.”

How much the department transforms after the Palisades disaster will depend, in large part, on its new chief. Moore, who joined the LAFD in 1995 and most recently was deputy chief of the Operations Valley Bureau, was chosen by Bass to lead the department over a fire chief from a major city outside California.

At stations around L.A., firefighters told Bass that they wanted an insider for the job, which she said factored into her decision.

“Given that the Fire Department was under such scrutiny, such a difficult time, morale is in the toilet, infighting that’s going on, the last thing in the world they needed, in my opinion, was somebody from the outside,” Bass told The Times.

Moore had signaled before his appointment was confirmed last month that he was troubled by the LAFD’s missteps with the Lachman fire and was going to bring in an outside organization to investigate.

But the following week, he appeared to change course, alleging that the media was trying to “smear” firefighters while saying he still planned to investigate the Lachman fire.

Moore will be in charge of implementing the 42 recommendations in the after-action report, which range from establishing better communication channels to how to defend homes where hidden embers could ignite.

The report drew the conclusion that top LAFD commanders had startlingly little knowledge about combating wildfires, including “basic suppression techniques.” It suggested that all LAFD members undergo training on key skills such as structure defense and how to draw water from swimming pools when hydrants don’t work.

In an interview with ABC7, Moore said that the LAFD has adopted about three-quarters of the recommendations and is considering creating a division specializing in wildland fires.

Members of Crew 4, the department’s new full-time wildland hand crew, practice cutting fire lines near Green Verdugo Fire Road in Sunland.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Since the Palisades fire, the LAFD has hired a 26-member wildland hand crew that uses chainsaws and other tools to chop paths through brush to stop a fire from spreading. When they aren’t battling fires, they do brush clearance throughout the city.

Earlier this month, as hand crew members practiced cutting fire lines through the brush in Sunland, the crew’s leader, Supt. Travis Humpherys, declined to say whether they would have changed the outcome of the Palisades fire.

Travis Humpherys is the Crew 4 superintendent.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

But they have already “made a dramatic impact” with brush clearance and fighting wildfires, including a 20-acre fire in Burbank in June, Humpherys said.

Moore’s requested budget of more than $1 billion for the coming year — a 15% increase over this year’s budget — includes money for a second wildland hand crew, as well as nearly 200 additional firefighter recruits and helitanker services to attack fires from the air. That amount could be pared down during the months-long city budgeting process, as the City Council and the mayor find ways to balance the overall budget amid financial headwinds.

Meanwhile, United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112 is charting an ambitious course to reduce the department’s dependency on the city budget, pushing for a ballot measure that, if approved by voters in November 2026, would raise nearly $10 billion by 2050 through a half-cent sales tax. But after the LAFD’s failures in the Palisades fire, some voters may be reluctant to entrust its leaders with more money.

“It’s hard to believe that we are fully prepared for the next major emergency,” Doug Coates, the union’s acting president, said in a statement. “We desperately need more firefighters and paramedics, more trucks, engines, and ambulances and more wildfire resources and neighborhood fire stations.”

E. Randol Schoenberg, whose family lost four homes in the fire, including his in Malibu — along with documents that belonged to his grandfather, the composer Arnold Schoenberg — said he would be happy to pay more taxes for more services.

But Schoenberg, an attorney who is representing Palisades fire victims in a lawsuit against the city and the state, said he expects the LAFD to honestly examine its mistakes.

“If they don’t really grapple with the issues of how this happened, then no matter how much money we throw at it, it’s going to happen again,” he said.

Times staff writer David Zahniser contributed to this report.