Residents have slammed council plans to turn a 19th century pub into a Tesco after it was left to fall into disrepair. More than 1,200 residents in Greenwich, London, have signed the petition to stop the pub from being turned into a Tesco store.
The White Swan Pub, which is 134-years-old, has been derelict after the previous tenants left the site unoccupied. The business has been closed since March 2020, with numerous planning bids submitted to Greenwich Council to convert it.
But Charlton residents want to restore the White Swan pub and have submitted a petition to the council. It said locals were “appalled” at the dereliction and disrepair it had fallen into.
Labour Councillor Jo van den Broek, representing the Charlton Village and Riverside ward, presented the petition to Greenwich Council at a meeting on December 6, reports MyLondon.
Cllr van den Broek said at the meeting: “Specifically, we’re asking planning enforcement to take action to ensure that the owners of the White Swan restore the property’s first-floor function rooms, which were destroyed by their workmen without planning permission.”
The authority received plans earlier this year from Mendoza to change the pub into a set of seven flats with a shop on its ground floor. Planning documents from Jenkins Law said that Tesco viewed the pub in December last year and sent a proposal for the space shortly afterwards.
The plans said: “We consider that it is unrealistic for the property to continue as a drinking establishment evidenced by the previous tenants’ failure to operate viably despite apparent community support and the extremely poor level of interest throughout the marketing campaign.”
The application also claimed the cost of restoring the pub would be at least £125,000, according to property specialists Davis Coffer Lyons.
The project would see an extension going into the beer garden and an extra storey being added to the Victorian pub.
The plans are currently being appealed, with a previous application last year to convert the first-floor function rooms of the pub into two flats being refused by the authority.
