Public houses can still provide a great opportunity for residential development, such as for flats or for HMOs and can provide an opportunity for tired vendors and publicans to ‘retire’ from the burdens and commitments involved in running a pub, when in many cases it is no longer viable.

We recently helped a client to obtain planning permission to change the use of a public house to self-contained flats and this article explores the principal issues we encountered in the planning process along the way.

This month’s article is focused more on some of the higher level issues relating to change of use, opportunities for extension and conversion and heritage factors. Next month will be concerned with a closer look at the residential amenity and challenges facing the plan layout that we encountered in the case of our recent win.

Lack of viability in pub operation
The starting point for all proposals for the change of use of pubs will be the policies of the Local Plan. This document might specifically address the loss of pubs or might engage this more generally with regard to ‘community uses’. Public houses fall within ‘sui generis’ use; a ‘miscellaneous’ planning class where planning permission is required for any movement in and out of that particular use and there are no PD rights.

The local plan approach toward ‘community use’ is mostly a reflection of the typical function and local contribution that such premises have tended to make, providing a focal social point, space for sporting and leisure pursuits (like pub darts, snooker or quiz teams), live music and events, meeting space for local groups and function space for occasions, depending on the particular amenities of the pub or character of the local community.

Therefore, in viewing any pub opportunity, understanding how this pub might have contributed locally, will help to form a strategy for whether it can be replaced with a residential scheme.