Plans to turn disused Pentlow pub into home refused

The pub shut in 2021 and the applicant has said it would fail to attract enough business to be viable if run as a pub again

Plans to turn a disused pub into a family home have been refused due to its community value.

Braintree District council said changing the Pinkuah Arms in Pentlow, near Cavendish in Essex, into a home would "result in a loss of a community facility".

The pub, which shut in 2021, was also of "historic, social and communal" value, the council said in its refusal.

The applicant, Bird and Sons Ltd, claimed the pub was "unviable".

The council was told it had been used as a local village pub since about the 1930s.

The plans involved turning the property into a three-bed home and fencing off part of the existing car park to create a garden.

A planning statement on behalf of the applicant stated previous pub tenants has struggled to make the business profitable and that "every day was loss making" when it re-opened after Covid-19 restrictions were lifted.

The planning statement stated: "Whilst the applicant has not recently offered the property on the open market it is nevertheless considered to be clear that the facility is unviable and there is little prospect of it being viable in the future, where it has sat redundant for several years."

It also claimed the pub's rural location hindered it and submitted evidence from a local estate agent to say even if offered for sale or lease it was "unlikely to yield interest".

However, Braintree District Council said the current proposal would "result in a loss of a community facility and service without an appropriate marketing exercise."

It added there had not been enough evidence to show the the pub was unviable.

The refusal notice also stated: The proposed conversion would lead to a loss of its historic, social and communal values, resulting in harm to a non-designated heritage asset by dilution of its historic significance".