Work can restart on the conversion of a former Leyland pub into apartments after it was previously halted because of concerns over the way the job was being done.
The Rose of Farington, on Stanifield Lane, called time for the final time just days into 2025 ahead of the long-proposed redevelopment of the site.
Planning permission had been secured three years earlier to create 10 new flats – within both the existing building and an approved extension – after it was suggested the business, formerly known as the Rose and Crown, was “financially unstable”.
However, South Ribble Borough Council ordered that the project be paused in March last year amid complaints about noise at unsocial hours and claims that rubbish was being thrown out of upper-floor windows into a skip in the street, rather than being sent down a waste chute.
A meeting of the authority’s planning committee last week heard that it later emerged the development had begun without the conditions imposed by the permission first being met.
As a result, the planning approval – which stipulated that those conditions had to be discharged and work started within three years of the green light being given – had expired on 14th January, 2025.
In order for the development to lawfully get under way once again, a fresh application had to be submitted, which has now been approved.
However, committee members were told that the applicant – Fylde Investment Ltd. – had advised that it could no longer afford to make the £18,000 contribution to improving public open spaces that had been required under the original permission – because of a rise in costs caused by the delay.
It was the absence of that payment this time around that councillors had to wrestle with when deciding whether to give the scheme a second chance.
An independent, council-commissioned assessment of the applicant’s claims that it would make the scheme financially viable if the open spaces cash had to be paid came to the same conclusion.
Committee chair Cllr Caleb Tomlinson branded the partially-gutted building “an eyesore”.
However, fellow member, Cllr Haydn Williams expressed concern about the loss of the payment – in spite of the fact that the nine one-bedroomed and one two-bedroomed apartments were “desperately needed”.
While sharing that concern, Cllr Phil Smith said that “on the basis that it wouldn’t be fair on the local community” to allow the situation to drag on, he would “reluctantly” support the revised proposal.
Cllr John Rainsbury added that sacrificing the £18,000 contribution was a “small price to pay for the benefit” of the development being completed.
The meeting heard that the costings for the scheme were calculated prior to the first application in 2022 – explaining the change in financial viability.
The new application was ultimately approved unanimously.
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