Walkthrough: converting a pub to residential

Converting a pub to housing needs planning permission in every case. Permitted development rights for changes of use and demolition of public houses were removed in 2017, and pubs are now a sui generis use outside the Use Classes Order, so there is no route that avoids a full application and the policy tests that come with it. Where the pub is also listed as an asset of community value, the case becomes an evidence exercise about marketing and viability long before it becomes a design exercise.

What follows is an illustrative walkthrough of one such scheme, a two storey Victorian corner pub with a car park and a first floor flat, in a suburb with two other pubs within a mile.

The building, its use and the community position

The pub had traded until eighteen months before the application, then closed. The freeholder wanted four flats and two houses on the car park.

The first thing the planning consultant did was not design work. It was a check of three registers: whether the building was listed, whether it lay in a conservation area, and whether it was recorded as an asset of community value. It was not listed and not in a conservation area. It had been listed as an asset of community value by the local authority following a nomination from a community group eleven months earlier.

That one fact reordered the whole programme.

Asset of community value implications

Listing as an asset of community value under the Localism Act 2011 does not stop a sale or a change of use. It does two things. It triggers a moratorium on disposal, giving community interest groups a window in which to express an interest and then a longer period in which to prepare a bid. And it is a material consideration in the planning decision, because the listing records a formal finding that the building furthers the social wellbeing of the local community.

In this case the moratorium had already run and no community bid had been made. That was recorded in the planning statement with the dates and the council's own correspondence, because an unanswered moratorium is evidence, and it is evidence the objectors could not contradict.

Where a bid has been made and is live, a planning application will usually be premature, and applicants who press on anyway tend to collect a refusal that reads badly on appeal.

Marketing evidence the policy required

The adopted local plan protected community facilities and required, before any loss was accepted, evidence that the use was no longer viable and that the premises had been marketed for a continuous period at a realistic price without a buyer or tenant coming forward for the existing use.

The marketing here had been running for fourteen months through an agent specialising in licensed premises. The application included the full marketing file rather than a summary of it:

• the agent's instruction letter, showing the asking price and the terms offered
• particulars as published, with dates
• photographs of the board on site, dated
• a schedule of every enquiry, viewing and offer, with outcomes
• copies of the advertisements in trade publications and on the agent's own listings
• a letter from the agent giving an opinion on why no offer was made

Two points from this file mattered more than the rest. The asking price had been reduced twice, which defeated the standard objection that the price was set to fail. And the agent's letter identified the specific reasons the trade did not want the site, which gave the officer something concrete to put in the report.

An honest observation: marketing evidence assembled after the decision to convert has been taken always looks thinner than marketing done properly from the start. Councils know the difference.

Viability of continued pub use

Policy asked for viability as well as marketability, and those are different questions. A pub can be marketable at a low price and unviable as a pub.

The evidence was three years of trading accounts, a note from a licensed trade valuer comparing turnover and gross margin with the pattern for comparable community pubs, and an assessment of the capital expenditure the building needed to trade competitively, based on a building survey. The valuer's conclusion was that the trade could not service the investment required.

A formal Viability Assessment at this level is work councils expect from a suitably qualified author, usually working to the professional standards of the relevant institution, and professional review before submission is strongly advised. The officer's own consultant reviewed it, which is normal, and the review fee was paid by the applicant under the council's published charging arrangements.

Design of the conversion

Only once the principle looked defensible did the design work start in earnest.

The scheme retained the pub building and its corner entrance, converted the ground and first floors into four flats, and placed two houses on the car park set back behind the building line. The external changes to the pub were deliberately modest: the signage and the fascia removed, the original windows retained, one new door in a secondary elevation, and the rear yard divided for private amenity space and bin storage.

Parking was the argument. The council's standard required a space per flat in this location, the car park was being built on, and the site sits 400m from a bus corridor with controlled parking on the surrounding streets. The answer was a parking stress survey using the established overnight methodology on two weekday nights and one weekend night, which showed capacity on the adjoining streets, and an offer of a car club bay secured by condition.

A Structural Survey was commissioned because the first floor joists were spanning onto a wall that the new layout wanted to remove. It changed the internal plan, which is exactly what it should have done, and it did so before the drawings were finalised rather than after.

Objections and the committee report

Fifty-one objections were received, largely on the loss of a community facility, and the local pub campaign group wrote separately. A petition was submitted. The application went to committee rather than being decided under delegated powers.

The officer's report accepted the marketing and viability evidence, gave weight to the asset of community value listing as a material consideration, and concluded that the marketing period and the unanswered moratorium together showed no realistic prospect of the pub reopening. The recommendation was approval with conditions. Members debated the point for forty minutes and approved it by a narrow margin.

The thing that carried it was not the design. It was that every assertion about marketing and viability had a document behind it.

What the pack contained

• a planning statement setting out the development plan position, the community facility policy and the material considerations
• the full marketing file, unabridged
• trading accounts and a licensed trade valuer's report
• a design and access statement
• a transport statement with the parking stress survey appended
• a noise assessment covering the flats' internal environment and the surrounding roads
• a contaminated land desk study, given the former fuel storage on the car park
• a biodiversity net gain assessment and metric
• a structural survey and a schedule of works

That pack took five months to assemble. The comparison with a shop to residential conversion under Class MA is instructive, because the prior approval route on a Class E building sidesteps almost all of this, and a pub has no such route.

This walkthrough is illustrative and does not describe a real named scheme. It is general guidance, not legal advice, and local plan policies on community facilities vary considerably, so check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

PlanScope drafts the Planning Statement and the other narrative documents in that list, structured to UK planning policy. Reports should be reviewed before submission, and we do not guarantee planning approval.