Comment: The planning system must protect our pubs
When you walk into a real community pub, you enter the heart of the city, town or village that you find yourself in. Whether it is to the north and The Baltasound Hotel on Unst, the south and The Turk’s Head on St Agnes, or any local community pub in between, you will find a unique mix of people, atmosphere and traditions. Pubs form such an important part of our heritage and our history and are hugely important to the communities they serve.
By Greg Mulholland MP
Yet it is a sad fact that currently 28 pubs are permanently closing every week. But what is much less reported, and far worse, is that considerable numbers of these pubs are viable, wanted and some actually successful and profitable at the time of closure.
Successive governments are quick to say how important the British pub is. That rhetoric simply isn’t backed up in planning law, which regards even long established pubs as fair game for unaccountable owners to make money from by bulldozing or selling them, with no regard for local people who use them. Today, I am leading a debate to try to change that. This will provide MPs with the opportunity to debate the current lack of protection for pubs, the fact that local communities have so little say over the future of their local, despite clear ‘moral ownership’ of their local pubs – and will also suggest ways in which the planning system can be changed to ensure that local residents have the powers they need to protect their local pubs.
In my own town, Otley in West Yorkshire, long famed for its pubs, the historic Summercross, the only pub of that name in the land, stands empty and derelict. It was closed, against the wishes of the pub landlord, the local community and town council, simply to make money – a lot of money – for the London based property company that had bought it with precisely such a purpose in mind. Few disagree that this is fundamentally wrong, but alas this kind of thing is happening up and down the land. The idea that pubs close because they are no longer viable or wanted is largely a myth; a myth, ironically, perpetuated not only by greedy developers, but also utilised by the large pub owning companies, keen to retain the freedom to dispose of their pubs for development, to plug another hole in the dyke holding back their eye-watering oceans of debt.
The current planning system offers scant protection for pubs, with it being perfectly legal to demolition a pub, unless the building is listed or is in a conservation area – even when this goes against the wishes of the landlord and the local community. Similarly pubs can also be converted into shops, betting shops, pay day loan shops, cafes and restaurants without the need for planning permission.
It is nothing less than a national scandal that many profitable and wanted pubs are being closed, simply because owners seek to cash in and make money from the pub, be it by applying to develop the pub or site, or by selling it to Tesco, with communities having little or no chance to stop this. This must be stopped and it can be. First, by closing the ridiculous loopholes by requiring that demolition and all changes of use to a pub are subject to planning permission. Secondly, in the proposed new national planning framework, by introducing a six-month moratorium on any permanent loss of a pub, it would allow time for other owners or operators to have the chance to buy it and allow for independent community consultations and independent viability tests to be undertaken. Doing this would have no effect on allowing the owners of genuinely unviable and unwanted pubs to convert them to other uses. But it would save hundreds – if not thousands of pubs.
The government is introducing the localism bill that aims to hand powers back to local communities from central government. This is a great opportunity to give communities a real say over the future of threatened local pubs and the proposed community ‘right to buy’ is a welcome idea. However, to be meaningful this must be backed up by changes in planning law that stops owners demolishing and converting pubs without even the need to apply for planning permission, otherwise, in many cases there would be no pub left for the community to bid for! In addition, for it to be a genuine right to buy, the current proposals must be strengthened in a way similar to the system in Scotland, where community bids should be accepted, or there is the danger that this new measure could prove to be little more than tokenistic.
The whole issue of planning protection for pubs is a real test of the government’s commitment to the ‘big society’ ideal. It would not cost a penny to give communities a genuine say over the future of their local, and would demonstrate that the government no longer thinks that is okay for pub owners to be able to rob a community of its pubs, with no real chance for them to even have a say or for others to take on the pub. It is essential if this government is to be regarded as ‘pro-pub’, as it wishes to be seen, for it to strengthen the planning system to give pubs more protection and to give communities a real say when they are threatened.
Pubs are at the heart of our communities up and down the country and part of our national heritage. It is time that the planning system recognised that. The all party parliamentary save the pub group will work with CAMRA, and other organisations, to lead the debate until it does, until we finally get some proper protection for the great British pub, something that would be warmly welcomed by communities the length and breadth of the country.
Greg Mulholland is the Liberal Democrat MP for Leeds North West. He is chair of the all party parliamentary save the pub group.
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