At a meeting in the village hall, an architect revealed the plans that the pub’s then-owners had commissioned. The Grade II-listed building was to be redeveloped into four separate dwellings, which would include building on the pub car park. The villagers were aghast.
Quickly, they got themselves organised. Piling into a council meeting at the Guildhall in nearby Axminster, they successfully fended off the planning application, blocking the change of use for the building.
Then, putting their money where their pint glasses formerly were, they formed a committee and raised £278,051 by selling shares in the project among the community to take over the premises.
They used planning law to lower the price they had to pay.
Thieves.
And for how long will the committee be able to keep the pub going. Just about all such “community” efforts fail as the community fails to turn up and spend more money after the initial bit of virtue signalling.
If it’s legal, they aren’t thieves. Pubs help keep villages alive, and the bonus here is that they prevent several new cars congesting their roads.
Tim – if you remember the Richmond Arms in Bath, up the hill from your old flat? Always empty, can’t have made much if any profit for years. Owner wanted to close it and turn it back into a house. Locals rebelled, had it named an Asset of Community Value and forced it to stay open. It remained empty as the campaigners rarely if ever actually went in there. So it went bust again, reopened under another name, has just closed down again and seems to be reopening as an upmarket pasta shop/cafe/bar.
Know it, wasn’t a regular. They did something similar with the cider house in South Stoke too.
What Sam Vara said.
I’m sure I remember this blog railing against those who claim legal tax avoidance is theft on a number of occasions.
Flatcap,
“It remained empty as the campaigners rarely if ever actually went in there. So it went bust again, reopened under another name, has just closed down again and seems to be reopening as an upmarket pasta shop/cafe/bar.”
Which is the sort of thing that Bath likes now. And the problem with a lot of villages is that they’re now dormitories for people who work in towns and come home with some Pinot Grigio to have with their wife. Most of the rural pubs in North Wiltshire aren’t really pubs, they’re restaurants. The smoking ban killed off all the village boozers. And there’s a lot of competition for those people eating out.
“If it’s legal, they aren’t thieves.”
Taxation is theft. So, hmmm.
@Bloke on M4 – given that it’s tucked out of the way, out of the town centre, has little to no passing trade and parking’s a nightmare I can’t help thinking that a restaurant might not work either
Yeah, it’s really a chimney pot pub for that little – and it’s tiny – village on the edge of Bath. There’ll not be any housing growth there because Green Belt. But folks tend not to drink in chimney pot pubs these days – that’s the part of the trade that got hit hardest by the smoking ban.
There’s simply a surplus of that sort of pub around.
It’s going to prove to have been a decent investment for those villagers who contributed when it inevitably gets converted to housing.
Forget the £100 merchants, it would be interesting to know who put up the real money.
As an aside, if we must have planning laws, why can’t the applications be judged by the locals themselves, instead of some distant council bureaucrat? All this “organising” and “campaigning” smacks rather of medieval supplicants petitioning their liege for mercy.
. . . if we must have planning laws, why can’t the applications be judged by the locals themselves . . .
England would still look like the 1930s, which in isolation might not be so bad – but it’s never in isolation.
[see: poverty, weakness, invasion]
All this “organising” and “campaigning” smacks rather of medieval supplicants petitioning their liege for mercy.
That’s pretty much what it is, with similar results.
They used planning law to lower the price they had to pay.
Thieves.
The only noteworthy thing is who’s doing it for a change; it is (apparently) a man bites dog story. If it was the usual crews of cunts I doubt you’d have mentioned it.
“As an aside, if we must have planning laws, why can’t the applications be judged by the locals themselves, instead of some distant council bureaucrat? All this “organising” and “campaigning” smacks rather of medieval supplicants petitioning their liege for mercy.”
Because absolutely nothing would get built or changed. It’s bad enough with councillors refusing planning permission that they should, and it having to be overruled nationally. If you live on a piece of land, that’s all you own. Not the view over rolling hills. Not the nice field next door. If you paid a premium for that then you took a gamble.
Someone wanted to turn the old gallery, which was a shabby, useless property near me into flats and nearly all the locals complained, started a lobby group etc. “They’ll just park in our streets” which wouldn’t be a problem in the first place if you didn’t live in Victorian housing without parking and owned 2 cars.
“Sam Vara
September 26, 2022 at 6:48 am
If it’s legal, they aren’t thieves. Pubs help keep villages alive, and the bonus here is that they prevent several new cars congesting their roads.”
Just because it is legal doesn’t mean its not theft. Civil asset forfeiture is theft. Most of my tax payment is theft.
I don’t think the previous owners would be at all disapointed at the outcome. It look to me to be a brilliant plan well executed by them. The started with a disused pub which was useless as it was listed, so most development would be prohibited. By the cunning trick of presenting plans that probably would never have been approved anyway, they persuaded the villagers who, obviously, had not been using the pub much before it closed, to raise money and buy it. By extending them loans to buy the property, they effectively swapped a worthless asset for cash. And the villagers end up with all the risk. All that working together probably was great for the social lives of the villagers, so they can hapily use their pub until enough of them move away or get bored, at which point they in turn will be left with a worthless asset and in need of another cunning trick – maybe they can persuade the government of the day to buy the pub.
why can’t the applications be judged by the locals themselves, instead of some distant council bureaucrat?
That’s easy. Get rid of the distant council. If you made the locals responsible for everything in their community, the lot, the roads, the street lighting, refuse collection & disposal, policing, fire brigade, hospitals & medical services, schooling, social care …. Which of course takes you back 2 or 3 hundred years. When locals were desperate for people to move to their locality & build housing. So they could contribute to all the services people want. It’s the story of all those small towns in the American west in the C19th, isn’t it? trying to encourage people to move to them so they could become big towns. Welcoming the arrival of the railway. Lot of places in the world are still like that. Certainly parts of Spain & Italy.
And this is a story of a certain portion of the middle classes. Who are what they’ve always been. A bunch of freeloaders.
Agammamon:
No, I tend to see it the other way around. Only if the state can potentially feel your collar for it does it count as theft. If you reported the tax office or whoever is licensed to seize your assets to the police, they would not be interested.
Either way, the rampant destruction of rural England has been dealt a minor setback, and to be honest I don’t care if what they did is counted as theft. More power to them.