From: on behalf of DC Secretaries
Subject: FW: Planning
application 09/01557/F
Re.
Planning application No. 09/01557/F
I write to express my objection
to the new planning application for change of use of the Bishop Blaize pub in
Sibford Gower.
My family and I live directly opposite the pub and
have endured what seems to have become a war of attrition by the present owner.
I deeply regret that our local pub should have become the subject of
financial speculation by an absentee landlord who appears to have absolutely no
interest in the area. He has a caravan parked in the car-park but is
otherwise never in residence.
The pub and the once beautiful
grounds are being left to slide into dereliction in his determination to win
this siege. His repeated re-applications for change of use seem to me to
make a mockery of a planning process by Cherwell District Council that has
already rejected his previous attempts to obtain permission to convert the pub
and build on the adjacent land.
Nothing has changed in the
conditions attached to the original rejection. The landlord has not made
any new case for the change of use, beyond the fact that the building is now
semi-derelict, which has been of his own doing.
There is
absolutely no reason why the pub might not still become a thriving and
well-supported amenity in our area. It might even now have become one
again, if the landlord had accepted the original offers being made to him to buy
the pub as a going concern, including an offer from our local brewery at Hook
Norton. The area is one of outstanding natural beauty, and subject to
Conservation restrictions – and still he persists in his applications to treat
the site as a property speculation.
I assume he is trading on the
hypothesis that the Council will finally be worn down by his repeated
re-application. I sincerely sincerely hope they will not be.
Hugh Pidgeon
Burdrop Green
Sibford Gower
Banbury,
Oxon
OX15 5RQ