COMMERCIAL
future use as a home. Gavin Sherman says “When we started, 70 to 80 per cent were being changed to residential – now, it’s fallen to only 40 or 50 per cent, whereas fast food outlets are doing very well.” He speculates that the recession has actually helped fast food outlets – people are no longer having a night out at a restaurant, they’re having a night in with a takeaway instead. Fleurets has sold a number of pubs for conversion to new uses. In the case of the Bridge Inn, Clitheroe, the pub had been boarded up for six months, and on the market with another agency, before Fleurets took on the marketing and sold it for conversion to two shops. The Turners Arms, Rotherham, was a brick street- corner pub in an area where it had once served workers at local factories; it was now redundant. Fleurets found potential buyers looking at a number of different
uses – affordable housing, a religious retreat house, storage. Even the possibility of demolishing it and erecting light industrial space on the site was considered. The building hasn’t in fact been demolished – but now, in a neat twist, it provides offices for a demolition business. The Beech Tree, Blackburn, also sold by Fleurets, became an Islamic charity’s meeting house. In city centres, quite a few pubs are being converted to churches. Gavin Sherman says he has sold quite a few pubs for conversion to mosques, though he thinks his most interesting deal was the sale of the Three Pigeons, Oswestry, to the local football team, New Saints, which now use it as their club bar for drinking in after the match. There are some problems peculiar to this market. For instance, although planning permission is generally not required to convert a pub to retail or
Planning is rarely a major issue, particularly in town centres.’
£80,000 +vat
FLEURETS
Old England Forever, Clayton-Le-Moors, Lancashire. Freehold £80,000+VAT
£1,150,000
CHRISTIE + CO FREEHOLD £1,150,000
The Bear & Ragged Staff in Bransford, Worcestershire. An attractive pub and restaurant in a very affluent area.
restaurant use, it is needed for other uses, particularly residential. Under the Use Classes Order 1987, pubs and bars are in the A4 class – ‘Drinking Establishments’ – so conversion is permitted to A1 (shops and retail), A2 (financial and professional services) and A3 (restaurants and cafes). For city centre pubs, conversion to
commercial use is generally simple. On the other hand conversion to residential use is often fraught. Councils will generally look for evidence that a pub is not a viable business in its current use before granting planning permission – which may mean that agents have to go through a protracted and futile marketing exercise to sell the pub as a going concern, even though there are buyers queuing up to convert it. Local branches of the Campaign for Real
Ale (CAMRA) often fight a battle against the residential conversion of rural pubs – particularly where it is the last surviving pub in a village – and they have managed to win a number of high profile successes. However Gavin Sherman says difficulties
with planning permission can be usually overcome – and are often overestimated. “Planning is rarely a major issue, particularly in town centres,” he says, “though you do have to prove it’s no longer viable as a business. I’ve never seen a council’s planning policy explicitly against change of use.”
The Beech Tree,
Blackburn, sold by Fleurets, became an Islamic charity’s meeting house. In city centres, quite a few pubs are being converted to churches.
60 MARCH 2010 PROPERTYdrum
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