Ray of hope for Hamstead Marshall pub campaigners

Recommendation to refuse housing plan for White Hart Inn

RESIDENTS in Hamstead Marshall fighting to save their village pub from being turned into housing may have won a reprieve.

Campaigners are opposed to the owner’s plans to convert the White Hart in Hamstead Marshall in to four properties.

The 16th-century inn closed in September last year and agents for the White Hart Inn Company argue that the pub is no longer viable – a statement questioned by many locals.

Residents and the parish council claim that the pub could be a success under the right management.

They are exploring the possibility of either taking over the pub and running it as a community enterprise or working with the owner, Stella Coulthurst, to try and find a buyer or someone to take over the lease.

The issue of viability will be the critical factor when the application is discussed at a meeting of West Berkshire Council’s influential Western Area Planning Committee next week.

Council planners have recommended that the application be refused as the loss of the pub would cause substantial harm to the community.

Before the meeting, councillors will hear confidential viability data from the last four years as put forward by the applicant.

A council report says the data clearly indicated that the ongoing losses are significant and non-sustainable.

However, the Save the White Hart campaign group have submitted their own data, which concludes that in the right hands the pub could be profitable, echoing the views of an independent valuer appointed by the council.

The council report said: “Clearly, the loss of the community asset is regrettable, as is any community asset.

“However, the planning test is whether that harm is so substantial as to merit rejection of the application. Officers consider this harm will be substantial to the local community.

“On the one hand if the application is approved, it will mean the regrettable loss of a valued and historic community facility of 18th century origin.

“On the other hand it will mean the addition of four additional dwellings, which, while small in number, still adds to the council’s overall housing provision.”

In the 19th and early 20th centuries the pub was used as a coroner’s court, timber salesroom, auction house and meeting place for the village.

It was also the first premises in Hamstead Marshall to be connected to mains electricity in the 1950s.

The crucial meeting on the pub’s future will be held in the council’s Market Street offices, Newbury, at 6.30pm on Wednesday, April 20.