Fight continues to prevent another pub being turned into flats

Questions hang over plans to turn a south Bristol pub into flats following a legal challenge to the council consent granted last year.

The Windmill was set to be converted into five flats after the owners won planning permission from Bristol City Council in November 2020.

But a private citizen has challenged the legality of the decision, and the application is set to return to a planning committee for reconsideration.

The legal challenge asserts the council failed to properly consider the pub as an asset of community value and failed to consider the effect of the loss of the pub on equalities, as it is legally obliged to do.

It also accuses the council of not properly applying planning policies that specify the circumstances under which a pub or community facility can be lost, according to a report to the planning meeting, which is scheduled for Wednesday.

The Save The Windmill campaign group pictured in July 2020 – photo by Ellie Pipe

However, council officers stand by their original recommendation that the proposals are acceptable and have again recommended that councillors approve them.

The council withdrew the previous planning consent after a “private individual” raised the prospect of a judicial review and the council conceded there were grounds to challenge, according to a Facebook post from Save the Windmill campaigners.

Eighty-four residents objected to the plans from Bar Wars to convert the Windmill into two one-bedroom and three two-bedroom flats when they were submitted a year ago. Three people told the council they supported the plans.

Three residents and a local councillor have objected to the application in the past week, but one neighbour has supported the plans, calling the empty pub an “ugly eyesore”.

The community of Windmill Hill have been mounting a valiant bid to save their pub – photo: Ellie Pipe

The Windmill closed in March 2020, before the first lockdown, and the community was subsequently unable to raise enough money to buy it.

The owners have said they tried as hard as they could to make the pub a success, but they could not make it work as a business and could not sell it as a pub either, despite dropping the price from £525,000 to £495,000. They were planning to sell it with the plans for conversion before the consent was challenged.

The campaigners, who managed to raise just £170,480, have said they hope the establishment at the corner of Windmill Hill and Eldon Terrace will remain for sale as a pub and that a private buyer will come forward.

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Objecting to the application, Green councillor for Windmill Hill, Lisa Stone, said it was “erroneously” granted and that five more flats were unnecessary in Bedminster, where hundreds of new homes are planned. The area “lacks” community venues, she said.

Residents who objected over the past week said the pub would be “cherished” by all the future new residents of Bedminster and that other community facilities in the area either were pubs they found undesirable or inconvenient to visit or were not pubs at all.

A resident who has lived next to The Windmill for the past four years said it is becoming an “ugly eyesore” and she was worried people will start fly tipping. She said there were “plenty” of other places for “community interest” nearby.

When the application first came before a planning committee on November 11, 2020, Windmill Hill residents and local councillors argued passionately that the pub should be preserved as a vital community asset.

But officers said there were no valid legal or policy reasons to reject the application, and committee members granted approval with “heavy hearts”.

Campaigners registered the pub as an asset of community value, but no community groups made a formal offer to buy it during a six-month moratorium on sale on the open market. That period ended on July 12.

Main photo: Martin Booth

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