The owner of a closed 18th-century Suffolk village pub has said her life is being ‘made a misery’ by planning regulations which are preventing her from selling the property as a house.
Julia Coulthard has been trying to change the Dobermann Inn pub in Framsden into a home to sell on the open market, but has been thwarted after Mid Suffolk District Council refused the plans and granted two applications for the pub to become an Asset of Community Value (ACV).
ACV status means that for five years the community gets a six-week preferential period to show interest and a six-month period to put in an offer, after which the owner can sell to anyone on the open market.
The second ACV for the Dobermann elapsed in October – an application for a third has been lodged.
The Grade II listed pub, now known as Asbach House, ceased trading in 2016 on the death of the landlady Sue Frankland, Mrs Coulthard’s mother.
Since then, Mrs Coulthard has been trying to convert the premises into a residence as she said the business was no longer viable and therefore had a low market value because pubs were rated according to trade and profits.
The result, she said, had been that the ‘once beautiful’ Dobermann is now ‘rapidly falling into decline.’
“The legislation is making life a misery, not just for our family, but for hundreds of privately owned pub owners of non-viable pubs across all of the UK.
“This is now being exacerbated by the cost of living and energy crisis.
“Pub owners are still going to have to pay extra bills and they can’t close the doors or sell it, so they are stuck and all because planners across the land won’t let them sell it,” Mrs Coulthard added.
A spokesman for Mid Suffolk District Council said: “The Assets of Community Value (ACV) scheme was introduced to allow communities to nominate non-residential buildings or land as assets which cannot be sold without the nominees having an opportunity to purchase the asset first.
“The nominees have to express their interest in the sale within six weeks of the asset going up for sale, and if they do, the owner has a moratorium period of six months to consider that offer before being free to sell their asset at a price of their choosing to any other interested party.
“We know how passionately our communities feel about protecting heritage assets where they live, and ACV status is just one of the ways they can do so. However, this status is not equivalent to ‘first right of refusal’ and cannot be used to prevent the sale of a property.”
Nobody from Framsden Pub Group, which is seeking to preserve the pub, was available for comment.
A previous version of this story reported the pub had been granted ACV status four times and wrongly described what ACV status was. We regret the error.
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