Demolishing a Pub…to extend a car park

Closed pubs can be awkward to convert due to large car parks and difficulty in adapting, and so the option to demolish is often taken, as I have highlighted almost each week on this blog. This is unforgivable but at least is tenuously justified. To demolish a victorian pubic house to extend a car park is simply unacceptable:

The Ring of Bells in Cleckheaton seems lijkely to succumb to this fate.

This building is vital to the quickly eroding street front, and has more economic potential standing and waiting for a few years for a use, than as a tarmac recess.

I can’t imagine Kirklees council allowing this to pass, but sadly the lack of a local plan will ensure democracy in all matters of spatial planning is not realised. Everyone in West Yorkshire could oppose this and it would still happen.