The owner of a former pub in a Herefordshire village has defended his bid to sell it as an AirBnB let rather than enabling it to continue as a pub.
The Lamb Inn, only pub in the village of Stoke Prior near Leominster before it closed in 2018, is now on the market as self-catering holiday accommodation at a guide price of £630,000.
But questions have been raised about whether this is legitimate given that no change of use for the pub, which dates back to the 17th century, has been granted.
Owner Terry Windmill has defended the move, saying that having invested heavily in the building, he is entitled to recoup that.
“I have nothing to hide,” he said.
“It was unliveable when we bought it. We have done a lot of work, it took us nine years to get the bar open again. We then tried for four years to make it work. I have run seven pubs, of which this has been the worst.”
He said of the planning wrangle he is now embroiled in: “I am depressed at the whole situation. We are both in poor health and all this is making it worse.”
A bid by Mr Windmill to covert to the pub to a four-bedroom house was refused in early 2018, with a subsequent planning appeal dismissed a year later.
“We are applying again for change of use,” Mr Windmill said.
The local group parish council has previously led efforts to re-open the pub and even expand it as a community facility, making an unsuccessful offer for it of £315,000 – precisely half the current asking price.
A subsequent parish council meeting agreed to raising the issue of the pub’s use with Herefordshire planning enforcement.
A Herefordshire Council spokesperson confirmed: “An investigation is under way into an alleged breach and we believe a retrospective application is currently being considered.”
Mark Haslam, Herefordshire representative of pubs campaign group CAMRA, said the group “does not think the asking price reflects its value as a closed pub”.
If the county’s pub owners could do what they liked with them, “we would have about four left, as most are worth much more as private residences”, he added.
“We support communities fighting to save their pubs, and it can work –four in the county are already community-owned.”
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