From: on behalf of DC Secretaries
Subject: FW: Planning application 09/01557/F
 
 


From: Hugh Pidgeon [
Sent: 14 December 2009 21:18
To: Planning
Subject: 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