Greg Mulholland: Call time on the loophole that threatens pubs

Communities are up in arms at the fact that their local pub has been – or faces being – turned into a supermarket and that they do not even have the right to object to the council. Constituents who approach their councillors or MP for support in saving their beloved local are incredulous when told that there is nothing they can do about it, that the planning system allows Tesco, the Co-op, Sainsbury’s et al the right to close and convert their pub.

Often we see a ridiculous situation where Tesco can rip out a pub and replace it with a Tesco Express, without needing planning permission – yet then has to apply for planning permission for some signage. This is the sort of thing that brings the planning system into disrepute.

While there is carte blanche to turn a pub into a supermarket, you can’t then turn a shop back into a pub, without needing to get planning permission. Even more bizarrely, the planning system – and therefore by extension the Department for Communities and Local Government – values theatres, launderettes and nightclubs more than pubs.

This is happening for a simple and easily tackled reason: existing legislation means planning permission is not required to convert a pub into a supermarket or office space, because of what are known as “permitted development rights”.

With the discredited giant pubcos still in billions of pounds of debt, they are asset-stripping their pubs, and supermarkets who want to expand are doing secret deals behind the backs of communities that enable them to predatorily target our pubs.

Research by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) has found two pubs a week are being turned into supermarkets.

Worse still, many of these pubs are not only viable, but actually profitable. The owner can cash in by exploiting these permitted development rights with no regard for the licensee or the community. The duty to maximise shareholder profit is leading to the wholly unnecessary loss of pubs and the Government has been very slow to respond to this fact.

Last month in the House of Commons, pro-pub campaigners tried to change the law so a planning application would be required before a pub can be demolished or converted. A cross-party amendment to the Infrastructure Bill was tabled at the end of January by MPs from the Parliamentary Save the Pub Group – Charlotte Leslie, Grahame Morris and myself. In the just two days it was live for MPs to add their names – 38 quickly did so, including 29 coalition rebels. Rattled by this strong show of support, Ministers brought forward a concession so they would not be defeated by our backbench amendment.

The concession was that if a community group got a pub listed as an Asset of Community Value (ACV), the permitted development rights would be automatically removed from that pub. A positive sounding move – though when you find out only 600 pubs out of 48,000 pubs in the UK are listed as ACVs, and it only applies to pubs in England, not Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, the truth is it will do little to stop the mass loss of pubs to supermarket conversions.

The ACV scheme arose from the Localism Act 2011, the idea being that if a community wanted to protect a much-valued local asset from being demolished or sold off for other use you could nominate that facility to be added onto a council-held register. If the council approves your application, should the owner seek to sell it, the community group can instigate a six-month moratorium to put together a rival bid to keep the asset in community hands.

It is a decent idea, but one that needs to be significantly strengthened. To have an impact at all, many more communities need to “list their local” long before there is any threat (not that they often know about any such threat, which is precisely the problem). CAMRA branches can advise and help with this.

However, the fact remains that it would be much simpler, easier and cheaper just to close these indefensible planning loopholes that are being abused.

So while the Government announcement is a step in the right direction and another victory for the Parliamentary Save the Pub Group, we will continue to push for removing permitted development rights from pubs altogether. Only then will we strike a real blow not just for pubs but for local democracy itself.

Greg Mulholland is MP for Leeds North West and Chair of the Parliamentary Save the Pub Group and was named a top 40 CAMRA campaigner of all time.