Historic Biggleswade pub must be restored says town council

A historic Biggleswade pub should be restored internally as close as possible to its original condition after a developer lost a planning appeal, a meeting heard.

Town councillors are calling for enforcement action over interior modifications understood to have been made to The Red Lion in London Road.

Appellant Terry Elliott submitted full plans to convert the Grade II listed 17th century premises into a house and turn an outbuilding into a garage and storage space.

But the development was refused by Central Bedfordshire Council and has now been dismissed on appeal.

A planning inspector explained: “While I acknowledge the public house has been closed for several years and dismissing this appeal wouldn’t guarantee its reopening, it would preserve the potential of such a use reoccurring.

“There remains, at this stage, a great deal of ambiguity over what’s proposed and therefore it would be unacceptable to leave such substantive matters to be controlled by condition.

“This is because the extent of the works and their consequent effect on the listed building is unclear and could also affect the structural integrity of part of the premises.

“The scheme fails to show an understanding of the historic significance of the building’s timber-framed structure or explain how the conversion works would affect this element of the building.

“This means the plans pose a significant risk to the historic fabric of the listed building and its heritage significance.”

Deputy mayor Mark Knight described it as “fantastic news”, saying: “A planning application was refused, and then they decided to do what they liked anyway.

“The developer appealed and has now lost that appeal. It makes our important community pubs stronger.

“We’re now in a position where a property speculator has made a number of modifications to a listed building. My understanding is that there wasn’t planning permission granted or building regulations for that. There’s certainly no change of use approval.

“This is now a matter for CBC’s enforcement team. I suggest we write to CBC asking the enforcement team to do its best to ensure the original structure, materials and the fabric of the building is restored as far as possible to the condition it was in before the start of the unauthorised work.”

Town councillor Duncan Strachan agreed, adding: “It was interesting reading the report about the notice which was taken of the town’s neighbourhood plan.

“This could be significant for us in the future. When reviewing applications, we should be considering our neighbourhood plan because it clearly helped to influence the planning inspector in this case and to obtain the result we were seeking.”

Town councillor Gary Barrett said: “We must follow through now and ensure this building is returned. We then mustn’t end our support if we want it to remain a pub or something similar we shouldn’t just stop at enforcement.

“We should be behind whatever the next stage is for that place, otherwise it’ll become a derelict building.”

Councillors agreed unanimously for officers to send a letter around enforcement to CBC.