Run your residential at The Blazing Donkey

We are a nineteen room country hotel in Kent that does one thing. Not a hotel that also takes group bookings. No passing trade, no weekend guests, no restaurant covers. When your group is here, the building is theirs.

If you run residential work, or have wanted to and never found the right place to do it, this page explains how working with us functions.

Every delegate has a private room with an en suite bathroom. We do not twin-share and we will not be asked to.

Most residential workshops put two strangers in a room to make the numbers work. We think it quietly undermines the thing you are trying to do. People who have spent a day in difficult material need somewhere to close a door at eleven at night, and whether they have that changes what they are willing to bring into the room the next morning.

It means a workshop here is capped at nineteen people. We are content with that.

We have tried to build something that is legible on one reading. The principles matter more than the numbers, and the numbers are published in full to anyone who asks.

You are charged per delegate, per night, not for the building. Almost every venue charges a fixed block: hire the space, guarantee the rooms, and if the workshop half fills that is entirely your loss. We charge for the people who actually come. A workshop that fills two thirds costs you roughly two thirds. It means we carry the occupancy risk alongside you rather than handing it to you, and it is the single term we would point to if you asked what makes this different.

One rate covers everything. Accommodation, all meals, refreshments, workshop and breakout space, housekeeping, and the whole booking and delegate administration operation. There is no separate room hire, no catering minimum, no admin fee. The rate reduces for longer stays.

Support staff are charged before anything is divided, at published rates, whether they are our people or yours. We publish the staffing levels we expect a room to be run at, and we publish what each person costs. We earn the same whether you bring your own team or use ours, which is precisely why we can publish the ratios rather than deciding them workshop by workshop.

Your own delivery time can be charged the same way. It comes out before the split rather than after it, which is worth more to you. We would rather tell you that than let you find out later.

What is left over is divided according to who owns the programme. If it is entirely yours and we contributed nothing beyond the building, you take the large majority. If we helped build it, less. If it is ours and you are leading it, less again. The percentage is about ownership of the work and nothing else, and it is agreed in writing before anything goes on sale.

We will also tell you plainly that our accommodation and staffing rates carry margin, as any hotel's would. We would rather say so than have you reverse engineer it, because a model you have to work out for yourself is not a model you will trust.

Booking opens six to nine months ahead, because a residential is a considered purchase and people need to arrange leave and childcare.

There are two decision points. The first, some months out, confirms that there is enough real interest to commit the dates. The second, shortly before the workshop, confirms the final numbers. If either point is missed, the workshop does not run, every delegate is refunded in full, and neither of us owes the other anything.

Delegate money is held in trust. Every payment your delegates make sits in a designated trust account. It is not our working capital and the business cannot draw on it. It is released only when the workshop actually commences.

That means a delegate who books nine months ahead is not exposed if anything happens to us, and neither are you. It is unusual for a venue of our size to do this. We think taking somebody's money nine months before you deliver anything comes with an obligation, and this is what the obligation looks like in practice.

Bring your own programme. You have a residential you already run, or one written and waiting for the right place. Bring your own support team or use ours.

Build one with us. You have the expertise and the standing but not a finished programme, and no wish to spend six months building one alone. Our senior people work with you on structure, materials, screening and safeguarding, and we do not bill you for that work. What we build ends up jointly owned, with no royalty passing either way and no restriction on you running it elsewhere.

Lead one of ours. We have programmes of our own, fully written and supported. If you have a caseload and a following but have never run a residential, this is often the sensible way to start. Everything is written, the delegates are screened, a support team sits alongside you, and if the workshop does not reach its numbers you are not out of pocket. Many people begin here and move to building something of their own.

Three things, said here rather than left to be discovered.

We do not promise to fill your room. We will promote your workshop to our own audience and we hope it helps. We are not going to write a promise into an agreement when it depends on other people's diaries. Plan on the basis that you are filling it.

We do not offer exclusivity on a subject. Themes overlap and two workshops on related ground may well run here in the same year, led by different people. If your programme depends on being the only one of its kind at a venue, we are not the right venue.

We are not a clinical referral route. We are a hotel. Nothing about working with us gives you access to anyone's patient list.

The work that happens here can be therapeutic and we are comfortable saying so.

We are not a clinic. There is no medical or nursing care on site, no diagnosis, no medication management and no crisis cover. What we provide is a safe, well run building, trained first aid, a written escalation procedure, staff present around the clock, and the judgement to stop something if we think someone is at risk.

The programme, its delivery and the decision about who is suitable to be in the room remain yours. Every delegate confirms at booking that this is not treatment and does not replace the care of their own clinicians.

If a programme needs on-site clinical cover, it should not run at a hotel, and we will say so rather than take the booking.

Bring the idea rather than the paperwork. We will tell you which route fits, whether the economics work at the price you have in mind, and whether the programme belongs here at all.Look round the place →

Full rates and terms for each route are sent on request.

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