Greg Mulholland: Planning for the future of the pub

Enterprise Inns decided the Woolpack was surplus to their requirements (they own no less than five others in the town!) and put it up for sale.

At least, for once they did not slap an all too common restrictive covenant on it. But they put the pub up for sale to any and all bidders, so it could cease to be a pub without any opportunity for the people of Otley to even comment on this.

This is all completely legal. The owners can do pretty much what they want with a pub. The community it has served for years has little or no say.

Quite simply, according to planning law, the pub isn't important. It can be changed overnight to a restaurant or café without any process or consultation and amazingly it is perfectly legal to demolish a pub without planning permission.

It also is perfectly legal to close a pub even when it is both profitable and wanted by the community it serves. As well as wrong, this is absurd.

If government ministers say they care about the pub, then say 'planning' to them. If ministers say they value communities, ask why they sanction a system that muzzles local people over the future of important community facilities?

If we are serious about saving and preserving pubs, then the thing that has to happen quickest is reform of planning law. The genuine public house must be enshrined in a separate planning category and any decision to close one should be subject to genuine community consultation and a proper, independent viability study.

If that was introduced today, we would not see anything like 39 pubs closing a week because it would no longer be in the interests of their owners to try to cash in when times are hard, sacrificing years of community history and heritage for the sake of a faster buck.

So here we have a rare opportunity with government, to push them to something positive for pubs and pub lovers before they get kicked out. No doubt such reform would opposed by the big pub owning property companies who want to continue to make decisions about pubs in their 'estate' simply to suit their shareholders' interests. But they would be supported by all who truly care about the future of the British pub.

As I file this, I have no idea what is going to happen to the historic Woolpack. We will know soon enough if the town has lost another pub due to the gross inadequacy of our planning laws and the decisions of a distant company acting in its own interests. No pub in this country should be allowed to close without its community having a say. It is time in Otley we decided what happened to pubs in Otley. It is time to call time on a planning system that is eroding out communities and our heritage.

Greg Mulholland is MP for Leeds North West and chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Save the Pub Group ​