Britain is facing a crisis of its pubs being shut down and flogged to developers to "make a quick buck," campaigners have warned.
Campaign For Pubs’ Greg Mulholland spoke to the Daily Star about the “national scandal” surrounding the UK’s historic boozers being stripped of their history and turned into flats. The industry still has scar tissue from previous planning laws that allowed pubs to be sold and turned into supermarkets without planning permission.
That law was changed in 2017, but not before hundreds of community locals were transformed “overnight” into little supermarket branches. Now, Greg has warned that even though that loophole is a thing of the past, there is “nothing to stop” the owners of pubs selling them on to developers.
READ MORE: Britain's newly-crowned 'wonkiest pub' up for sale at £178k after Crooked House blaze
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He explained: “We have a national scandal where perfectly profitable pubs [that are] actually making money are still being bought and closed, or run down for the purpose of redevelopment. Because in many cases the value to a developer from developing a pub into flats and building on the car park is greater than the value of the pub as an economic entity.
“There is nothing to stop that. We are seeing pubs that are perfectly profitable, perfectly viable pubs, are being closed deliberately against the wishes of their communities and often against the wishes of the tenant-landlord who suddenly finds they’re kicked out.”
Greg touched on the supermarket loophole of the mid-2010s but explained that even though it had been beaten lessons from that time had not been fully learned, and dangers to pubs were still abundant.
He continued: “We saw a huge number of pubs before 2017 converted to small supermarkets and that was because of the absurdity that you didn't need planning permission – there were permitted development rights to turn the pub into a mini Tesco or a Co-op and I’m afraid the large supermarket chains all ruthlessly exploited that really cynically and shut pubs against wishes of communities and virtually overnight announced that they were turning into a supermarket. And the community was absolutely stumped to hear that there [wasn't any] planning permission.”
He added: “We got that changed and those… development rights thankfully were finally ended in 2017… nonetheless, there is really nothing to deal with the various ways that owners sell pubs for value or simply run them down and close them and then tell the council that they're not viable anymore when their [real] intention is to turn a pub into a house or to redevelop or demolish it.”
Greg drew attention to the high-profile case of Britain’s wonkiest pub, the Crooked House, which was recently at the heart of a national scandal after its sale, fire and subsequent destruction.
He added: “Obviously, we recently saw the shocking case of the Crooked House in the Black Country. The reality is up and down the country our pubs are being cynically closed and [their] assets stripped to make a quick buck for often faceless corporations and greedy developers.”
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