THE future of a country house will be determined next week.

The leaseholder at Stanmer House in Brighton said there are “a number of opportunities” for the 18th century manor house after the lease to Alex Proud’s management company ends next Thursday.

Mike Youles, property manager at the KSD Group which is the leaseholder of Stanmer House, said: “We were notified that Proud Publishing Ltd [the tenant] will be liquidated on February 27 so that will be our first opportunity to assess the condition of the house and what we intend to do with it.

“The lease provides for all sorts of usage, from residential space to office space to a hotel.

“All of these are options but the ground floor is an area where the owners and the council want to maintain its integrity to the public, and access needs to be given on a set number of days during the year.”

Mr Youles said Brighton and Hove City Council is the freeholder and businessmen Peter McDonnell, Christopher Gargan and Mark Ratcliffe, who own the KSD Group, bought the 105-year lease for Stanmer House in 2018.

He said: “When they acquired the lease they got Proud Publishing as their tenant. We were concerned there were some bad reviews of the house, but we didn’t have any rights to interfere with Mr Proud’s business.

“We would argue he has not utilised the building to its full capacity.

“Peter, Chris and Mark are Brighton people and they bought it because they want to preserve it.”

Entrepreneur Alex Proud has been running the house since June 2016 and last month he told The Argus he had to close the venue because of a proposed rent increase.

Mr Youles said: “There was a rent review due in November 2016 but it was never instigated. The lease calls for any rent increase to be backdated to that date.

“It was going to be determined by an independent valuer this week, but Mr Proud notified the surveyor to say he could not pay his share of the evaluation.”

Mr Proud also runs Proud Cabaret Brighton in St George’s Road, Kemp Town, and two cabaret venues in London – Proud City and Proud Embankment.

Companies House shows five of Mr Proud’s 11 companies are in liquidation, including Cabaret Club (Brighton) Ltd and Country House (Stanmer) Ltd.

Mr Proud said Country House (Stanmer) Ltd was a “trading company” and that “all the companies connected with Stanmer House are going into voluntary liquidation”.

He added: “The landlord did want a substantial rent increase and they wanted to backdate it, which would have cost us hundreds of thousands of pounds.

“I cared about Stanmer and it’s been hard walking away from it. We moved in on the promise there would be lottery funding through the council.

“The house in its current lease is virtually impossible to make work, as the overheads are just too high.”

When asked about Proud Cabaret Brighton, Mr Proud did not confirm which of his companies would be running it, but said it is “very healthy”.

He said: “We own the freehold at Proud Cabaret Brighton and we will be there for many more decades.”