The Crooked House Enforcement Notice Appeal Inquiry
I’ve been following the story of the fire and subsequent demolition of the Crooked House in detail on this blog since the day after the demolition took place. We’re now at the stage where an enforcement notice has been issued by the planning authority ordering the owners to rebuild the pub “as similar as possible” as it was before the fire took place.
The latest news as of yesterday, 13/04/24, was that the newspapers had noticed the appeal documents are available online (also linked through my timeline). I have lots of thoughts and mainly a lot of questions about what those documents contain. Since the timeline is already very long, I thought I’d write a new post to summarise the sections of those documents that raise questions for me. I welcome comments on this post because I am sure there are a lot more people out there who are better informed than I am.
It’s probably worth reiterating that this post is just my own speculation based on the facts of the case as they have been reported. I’m not making any allegations or judgements – just trying to untangle the questions I have about the case. I am hopeful that the planning inquiry and the resolution of the police case associated with the fire at the Crooked House should resolve a lot of them in due course. I trust the process to analyse the evidence and take the right course of action based on it.
The Inquiry
The appellant appeal form asks for an inquiry, rather than a hearing or written representations. The appellant estimates this will take 5 days, with 7 witnesses called on their part. They state “The alleged breach, and the requirements of the notice, are unusual and particularly contentious.” I think everyone can agree with that.
We know that the enquiry date has been set for 23rd July, starting at 10am, so that is the next big date where we will get more information, unless there is any movement into the police investigation, which of course runs as a separate thread to our story.
The Grounds for Appeal
This is where all of the detail is. The appellant lays out their grounds for appeal against the enforcement notice in a 14 page document. I’d like to work through and flag up areas of interest where I have questions.
Page 1 – Background
The notice was served against the company that owned the Crooked House as well as two individuals – a director who was in post at the time of the demolition, since retired, and the new director who has taken their place. The document states that the retired director, who resigned in December 2023 “is no longer an officer and has no interest in the Land.” It also says that that individual has “no legal right or power to take steps to comply with the Notice, if upheld.”
I find this really interesting. The company is accused of a breach of planning law, but the individual who was in charge at the company and the decisions it made at the time of the breach can simply step down and wash their hands of all responsibility. I haven’t been able to find anything in the government’s documentation about the liability for planning law. I would have thought that since the notice was served against the company AND two individuals, that was making a legal statement that all three entities have a responsibility in this matter. But as I say, I cannot find any documentation that would confirm or deny this position.
Page 3 – Grounds of Appeal
On this page, the appellant sets out the context of the events at the Crooked House as they understand them. They flag up that, following a break in on 25th June 2023, the pub was closed and not trading when the appellant purchased the freehold on 21st July 2023. It took me a while to spot the details of that break-in at the time, recorded on the pub’s Facebook page. What seems like an unfortunate coincidence left the pub unoccupied and closed to trading at the time of the fire on 5th August 2023. To my knowledge, the police have never made any details about their investigation into the break-in and the damage that was caused to the building at that time. I’d certainly be interested to know more about what happened and who was responsible.
(Note: the landlord handed in his keys to the building on July 18th, according to the Telegraph)
Next, the appellant states that they were “not in any way responsible for the start of the fire. Its officers did not cause the start of the fire, whether by themselves, or by instructing or encouraging any other person, or by any neglect on their part. As far as the Appellant and its officers are aware, the fire was either due to entirely accidental causes or possibly a deliberate arson attack by a third party or a fire lit by an unknown trespasser which got out of control.” Their reason for highlighting this (not least that if you hadn’t committed arson you would be pretty keen to put it in writing that you hadn’t committed arson) is that they contend that the fire in itself was not ‘development’ or a ‘breach of planning control.’
But I would think this contention has to be parked as speculative at the moment because the police are currently investigating the fire as arson and there are six suspects on bail. Until there is some resolution to that case, whether those suspects are innocent or guilty, the inquiry cannot make any assumptions as to whether the fire was accidental and if it is confirmed as arson, who is responsible.
Page 4 & 5 – It is contested that the demolition does ‘not constitute a breach of planning control’
Next, we hear detail about the appellant’s meeting with the Council on 7th August to assess the damage caused by the fire. There, as we know, they had permission from the Council to undertake limited demolition to make the building safe. We know this ourselves, as Council Leader Roger Lees has been quoted as saying “The agreed course of action included the removal of three elements of the first-floor front elevation only. This was only to avoid the weak parts of the structure from falling.”
We don’t know any more details about what those elements were, but I’m sure the Council must have it documented. The appellant tells us that when “the upper sections of the Building” were removed, they took with them “the steel tie ins which rendered the remaining structure, in the contractors (sic) opinion, completely unsafe” Essentially, when they removed whatever they removed, they decided to take out some of the supporting structure that had been used to stabilise the building in previous generations. It will be up to the inquiry to investigate this and conclude whether, in fact, the supporting structure should have been damaged or removed at this stage.
Then, because the Council officers had left the appellant says the director agreed that the contractor needed to take down “the mainstay of the remaining structure” because there was a high perceived risk of the building collapsing “and causing serious injury or fatality on the Land given the entry on to the Land by large numbers of people some of whom were conducting vigils and others removing bricks and other items as memorabilia/for sale.” This assertion really rings bells for me, because I don’t think that there were large numbers of people there. The conducting of vigils and the removals of bricks were all reportedly occurring after the demolition, not in the aftermath of the fire. There were certainly some members of the public in the area, because we saw amateur footage of the bulldozer tearing the building down, but the real flow of people to visit the site came after the demolition.
I also remember the shock and outcry that the demolition caused, it was so seemingly out of nowhere. At first, there was confusion about when the demolition had actually taken place, as we can remember from articles like this one in the Birmingham Mail. Photographs after the fire on 6th August show the building was roped off, keeping the public away and images like the ones in this article, also from the Birmingham Mail, show fire crews present but no members of the public visible. It was reported that a group gathered at the site “on Tuesday evening” – that is 24 hours after the demolition – to mourn the pub’s demise. So I think that the appellant’s assertions here will be scrutinised at the enquiry.
Page 7 – Comment: “No notification had been given to the owner of the Building that applications to Historic England had been made”
The appellant points out that the building was not listed, which is true, and that they had not been notified that applications had been made to Historic England. Which is completely believable. As I said in my timeline, The Telegraph reported that Historic England had received a request that it be granted listed status in the first week of August 2023. Which means they received the application sometime in the four days before the fire took place. Given that I don’t think that anyone expected the roof of the Crooked House to be destroyed in a fire on Saturday 5th August, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that Historic England would have notified the new owners of the application in due course. I’m also not sure what this proves. They didn’t know that Historic England may have been about to consider the building for listing status, but what would they have done differently if they had?
Page 9 – Comment on the building as a public house
In this part of the document, the appellant is suggesting that “the Building was no longer operating as a public house. Marstons had sold the Building as the public house was not viable. The pub was not at the time of the fire or subsequently a serving community asset, nor had it been sold as a serious commercial or going concern.”
I think there are going to be some serious challenges to these assumptions. For example, it was reported on 15th August by the Shropshire Star that the Crooked House was sold by Marstons as a going concern. The sale of the Crooked House took place as a planned rationalisation exercise under the banner of Project Aramis, aimed to reduce the company’s debt. They had already sold 137 pubs to Admiral Taverns for £44.9m in 2019. You can read the Project Aramis brochure here, if you like. The pub company had identified 61 “non-core” pubs for sale. Nowhere does it say that the pub was being sold as anything other than a going concern.
Coincidentally, one of my locals – the Blue Pig at Trench – was also part of Project Aramis. It was sold in recent months and now runs as a freehouse. When I had heard about it being up for sale, I spoke to the then Marston’s-tied landlady about it. She said that the Blue Pig had been up for sale for years, even before Project Aramis was announced, and she kept on running her business in the interim until such time as it would be sold. It was also reported that “the pub has been a popular stop for tourists” but the roof needed work as it was looking tired and dated, so Marstons agreed to replacing the roof completely – which was reported in the Express and Star. This satisfies me that Marston’s disposal of non-core pubs doesn’t mean they were not viable businesses, and I’m sure the matter will be discussed at the inquiry.
Page 11 – A sustainable community facility
The appellant argues that they are happy to rebuild the pub, but they want to rebuild it on a new site.
Rebuilding the Building in its current location will not provide a sustainable community facility, just as it has not in the period preceding the sale to the Appellant. It was not providing a sustainable community facility prior to the sale by Marstons.
The arguments seem to hinge around the fact that the pub was not a going concern (but I think it was, we’ll have to see what the inquiry thinks) and that it wasn’t a listed building or an Asset of Community Value. The List Your Local campaign that has arisen since the demolition has resulted in 65 pubs being flagged as historically and socially significant and in need of protection and in February five West Midlands pubs were submitted for Grade II status. This, along with CAMRA’s decades of campaigning for the protection of historic pubs, shows that there are significant gaps and omissions in the current planning system. Not having listed status does not mean that the Crooked House was not deserving of it.
At the time of the sale, it was reported that the new owners were buying the building for “alternate use” so they would have had to negotiate the planning system to negotiate any change of use. I have no doubt that the listing application probably along with an application for Asset of Community Value status would have moved along significantly when that planning process started. But that’s just speculation and whatabouttery. Which is kind of how I feel about the comments on page 11.
Page 13 – further comment
Just a reiteration of the point that the appellant’s arguments rely heavily on the fact that the building was not viable as a pub. I think it was. What will the inquiry think? We’ll find out in July.
Miscellaneous Comments
The Daily Mail’s Anonymous Source
I recorded the Daily Mail’s article of 9th August on my timeline. In it, they reported that “A source told MailOnline that the purchase was ‘all about access’ and followed disagreements between the firm and Marston’s over an access road to the pub which they shared.” I think it would be a great time for the MailOnline and the inquiry to revisit that source and that claim, since it would certainly have a huge bearing on the benefit of relocating the Crooked House for the appellant.
The Grandfather Clock
We saw the Telegraph report that an antique grandfather clock and several other items had been removed prior to the fire, by persons unknown. We still don’t know who took them, or why they had the surprising foresight to remove them just days before the surprise conflagration. I’ve got no real point to make here, it just seems like it would be interesting to know the answer to this question.
So there you have it. Just my off-the-bat thoughts, reading the documents this morning. No doubt there are plenty of other areas for investigation that warrant enquiry too. Just my thoughts about the appellant’s comments and the facts of the case as I have read the material available in the public domain. I’m sure the inquiry will have much better access to information than I do and I look forward to hearing the results of the appeal process, whichever way it falls.
