ABOUT THIS BLOG

This popular and historic pub was acquired by its owners in 2009 with a view, initially, to building flats for social housing and then subsequently developing a small housing estate. Local residents opposed these plans from the start.

Planning permission was granted in 2010 after which the site was put up for sale. After many years of inactivity, building work finally started in July 2015. Locally, this was seen as good news. However, the houses have yet to be completed.

The aim of this Blog has been to keep residents informed of current developments and to record the long history of this small community's fight to keep its pub.

Friday 20 November 2009

What Next?

Having studied the new proposals in some depth, we have to admit to being somewhat confused by the basic designs.  Three storey "dwellings" with five bedrooms?  And only two day rooms on the ground floor?  We would have thought that for a modern house to be desirable in the current climate there would have to be at least three ground floor rooms ie. a kitchen, lounge and dining room.

Call us paranoid if you like but none of this made sense to our way of thinking until someone else dropped another variable into the mix.  What if, at some future time, having won permission to develop these "dwellings" the owners decided to convert them to flats?  Eight dwellings with three storeys = 24 flats.  Which is, purely coincidentally, the same number of cars the application makes provision for!

We've checked with the Borough Council who advise that another planning application would be required if the owners wanted to undertake such a conversion.  However, by that time the pub would be long gone and the "dwellings" erected.  And where would the residents be then poor things?

Of course, all of this is purely hypothetical and just another example of our weary ramblings .....

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