A DERELICT stately home has been sold off as individual luxury apartments for more than £6m, despite no work being carried out on the building.

Windlestone Hall, near Rushyford, remains covered in scaffolding with smashed and boarded up windows, however dozens of investors have already paid between £84,690 and £407,165 for studio apartments.

According to Land Registry, a total of 37 studio apartments were sold between January 2018 and March 2019 for sums totalling £6,047,710. The property is part of the Carlauren Group, founded by Sean Murray in 2015,

which announced a multi-million pound makeover of Windlestone last July.

Work was due to be completed by the end of this year, however Carlauren is yet to secure planning permission from Durham County Council, which sold the once grandiose country mansion to William Davenport for £241,000 in 2011. Davenport was jailed for fraud in 2016 after pretending to be an American tycoon to secure a mortgage on Windlestone, and the hall was repossessed by Barclays bank before being purchased by Carlauren.

The Carlauren Group owns a number of properties around the UK, one of which has just closed amid reports of staff not being paid.

In a video circulating on social media, Carlauren’s chief operations officer Andrew Jamieson tells care home staff: “There is no money in the banks, I am telling you right now there is nothing. It’s all gone.”

However a spokesman for the Carlauren Group said Mr Jamieson was referring only to the closed care home.

The spokesman said: “Any comments made in a private Carlauren Care staff meeting by Andrew Jamieson are referring to the losses made at our care home recently closed, Tyndale House, Yeovil.

“Windlestone Hall, County Durham is part of the Carlauren Group. The company is expecting to submit plans for outline permission in the near future, which will include the addition of the external owned land which is currently not part of the listed freehold building. Until this time, work has been put on temporary hold.

“Once plans are submitted and approved the company is looking forward to developing the site into a luxury hotel and resort.”