'Absolutely not ideal' - stable staff chief frustrated over lack of accommodation for members during Glorious Goodwood

The representative body of stable staff has expressed its frustration that not all workers requiring overnight accommodation at next week's Qatar Goodwood festival will be able to stay at the racecourse during the five-day meeting. 

While a limited number of rooms are available on site at Goodwood, they will be oversubscribed during the track's biggest meeting of the season and this year alternative accommodation for stable staff has been booked at the University of Chichester, around four miles away.

While the course will provide transport to and from the off-site accommodation, starting from 5.30am, National Association of Racing Staff (Nars) chief executive George McGrath said the situation was far from ideal for his members and urged Goodwood and other tracks facing similar accommodation issues to seek a long-term solution.    

"It's a frustration but [where Goodwood is concerned] it's only at the Qatar festival," said McGrath. "The issue is that the accommodation, which is usually okay, is a Grade 1 listed building so you can't do very much with it at all.

"There are very few hotels around there and, when you get to the Glorious meeting, those hotels have been booked up months in advance. It's difficult but absolutely not ideal. 

"The staff like to be near their horses and don't like to be in a hotel down the road, so it's a case of logistically managing it the best you can."

As the prospect of developing the current on-course accommodation is slim due to its listed status, McGrath would like to see Goodwood invest in a new building to cater for demand at every fixture. 

He added: "The ideal is a new building adjacent to the racecourse but someone has got to find £10 million and that's the difficulty. Ed Arkell and his team are very supportive and do their utmost for the staff and the horses but when any clerk of the course or managing director proposes building or renovating staff accommodation, the first question from the board is, 'When do we see a return on investment on it?'.

"Well you don't because it's a cost of business and then you have the situation where they'd rather put up with the frustration of the staff and the [negative] social media comments once a year rather than actually doing something."      

George McGrath: "staff like to be near their horses" Credit: Edward Whitaker

McGrath said his members face similar challenges at other major festivals, highlighting the Cheltenham Festival in March and the Scottish National and Gold Cup meetings at Ayr as particularly problematic when it comes to accommodating stable staff. 

Arkell, Goodwood's director of racing and clerk of the course, agreed that the situation is not ideal and said his team were committed to finding a solution. 

He said: "We started to look at plans pre-Covid and ran into some fairly significant brick walls because of listed building status and what we can and can't actually do. If we're going to provide single occupancy rooms, which we think is the most important thing, then we need to, provide another site to accommodate people. 

"We had a very good hotel just down the road which we used last year but unfortunately that has been closed and is now a government immigration centre. That has caused us some problems and the closest place we can find the amount of accommodation we need is Chichester University.

"We continue to work with Nars, George and also internally to try and find a long-term solution. We are actively looking at a couple of things and will continue to do what we can because ensuring stable staff are on site, looked after properly and close to their horses has to be high up the priority list, but the ongoing issue remains that the stables, the house and all the parkland is Grade 1 listed which makes it very hard to do anything. We agree it's not ideal and the sooner we can get a solution the better."

Read more:

Find out who remains in contention to run on day one of Glorious Goodwood as entries and confirmations are revealed 

'It's one of the most important weeks for us' - Wathnan set for Glorious Goodwood as English Oak spearheads day-one team 

How are the markets shaping up for the big races at Glorious Goodwood?

Sign up to receive On The Nose, our essential daily newsletter, from the Racing Post. Your unmissable morning feed, direct to your email inbox every morning.