'It's not good enough' - stable staff boss blasts Haydock accommodation

Haydock has admitted it "didn't perform" after stable staff were forced to share rooms in its hostel on Friday night – a situation branded "not good enough" by union boss George McGrath.

Reacting to disquiet among those staying at Haydock, McGrath, the chief executive of the National Association of Racing Staff, said: "They were sharing. There was a communal bathroom and for a Group 1 racecourse that's not good enough.

"They need proper accommodation on site. Some of these lads are feeding horses at 5am and the last feed may be at ten at night. They need to address it so they have suitable single en-suite accommodation."

The track usually puts stable staff up in nearby hotels, but as many of those rooms were already taken by some of the 8,000 racegoers who attended Friday's evening card, which was followed by a Paloma Faith concert, the course found itself short of overnight accommodation.

"We were in a perfect storm because it was a busy music event and local hotels were under pressure on a busy Friday night," said Jockey Club Racecourses north west regional director Dickon White.

"We reserve a certain number of rooms for stable staff and we had a lot of demand, with the volume of runners coming up from Newmarket and Lambourn, and we tried to deal with it as best we could.

"We tried to organise additional rooms, but we couldn't get anywhere local so we offered accommodation further afield, in Manchester or Liverpool, but yard staff said that was too far away.

"So we said the next best thing was to reopen the hostel. It's not perfect, and the plan is to redevelop that over the next 12 months to ensure we have state of the art accommodation."

Dickon White: 'We were in a perfect storm'Credit: John Grossick (racingpost.com/photos)

Asked about staff having to share rooms, White added: "The plan was to have single occupancy in the rooms, but unfortunately so many people came that some had to share. That was never our intention and we hold our hands up, we didn't perform – it wasn't quite how it should be.

"It certainly wasn't any slight on stable staff. We absolutely want to deliver for them, they are a key stakeholder and we have to hold our hands up when we can't deliver what we have done historically."

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