Punters are rallying around a historic pub after it was forced to close due to Labour’s tax raids and high energy bills.
Drinkers are scrambling to safeguard the future of The Plough Inn, in Radford, which shut its doors for the final time last month.
The pub, operated by Nottingham Brewery, had been battling rising costs on all fronts before a ‘To Let’ sign went up outside the building, now being marketed at £20,000 a year.
Operators say anyone willing to take on the challenge is welcome to try, but they were losing £1,000 a week, with one recent weekday takings reaching just £80.
In response, members of Nottingham’s Campaign for Real Ale have moved to have the St Peter’s Street pub awarded Asset of Community Value status.
The designation, which the pub previously held until it expired in 2021, would force any future sale to be flagged to locals and give the community six months to mount a bid to buy it.
CAMRA secretary Andrew Ludlow said: ‘We have received a number of requests from locals who feel strongly that the pub is part of the local community and its loss would detrimentally impact on local residents.’
Residents fear the pub could go the same way as several others in the area, many of which have been converted into housing, shops or offices.
The pub, operated by Nottingham Brewery, had been battling rising costs on all fronts before a ‘To Let’ sign went up outside the building, now being marketed at £20,000 a year
Planning permission has already been granted for five townhouses at the rear of the Nottingham Brewery site, while similar proposals were recently approved to transform The Mill in Basford into nine new homes.
CAMRA’s pub protection officer David Smith said: ‘If it closes for good then conversion to residential is most likely with the loss of a lovely local which has architectural interest.’
‘Even if we obtain the ACV listing it is not a given that someone will be able to buy it as the legislation has no teeth to use compulsory purchase powers to save it.’
CAMRA expects to find out if the ACV application has been successful by the end of the year.
The pub, built in the 1920s, was the winner of the Nottingham CAMRA’s Mild Trail best pint for five consecutive years and was described as a ‘village pub in the city’ that had retained its local feel. It boasts an interior rated as having ‘some regional importance’.
Richard Whittaker, the owner of Nottingham Brewery, said: ‘When the pub closed we had 300 interactions on Facebook and our comment would be if every one of them had gone in the pub and bought a pint we’d still be operating.
‘The pub was running at a loss of about £1,000 a week and as a brewery we kept it going as we wanted it to be the face of Nottingham Brewery but the Tuesday before we closed the pub took £80.
‘Wages were £200 plus, never mind the gas and the electric, water, the council tax and everything else. It’s not been viable for three or four years. If someone else can make it pay we’d happily let them take it on.’
Mr Whittaker said it had once been a ‘thriving community pub’ but the face of Radford has changed, from local people stopping off at the pub on their way home from work to an area with imposing student blocks.
In 2023, DBSR Property Limited was given planning permission to convert the pub’s upper floors into accommodation.
‘One of the conditions, which is very clearly there, is no one can occupy it until the pub has been refurbished and is trading,’ Mr Whittaker said.
‘We, as the developer, suggested that wording in order to get planning permission because no one was living on site, the upper floors were derelict, so all the way through this we’ve been committed to try and keep it.
Operators say anyone willing to take on the challenge is welcome to try, but they were losing £1,000 a week, with one recent weekday takings reaching just £80
‘This whole spiel that this is a developer who wants to flatten the site and build more student houses is very wide of the mark. There is planning permission to build a row of five properties across the back where the old brewery is and the brewery was to relocate to a site that has already been acquired in Clarke Road in The Meadows.
‘If DBSR had bought this to develop it they would have done it on day one. The amount of money that’s been ploughed into the brewery and the pub just to keep them running over the last two-and-a-half years isn’t the actions of a quick buck developer who’s buying the site, flattening it and building another tower block.’
