Crooked House illegal demolition: council enforces order to rebuild!

Last edited by rinks on Tue Feb 27, 2024 1:33 pm, edited 2 times in total.

This keeps strawberry floating happening. Greedy banana split property developers think they can just knock down landmark buildings without permission, because they figure that once they're gone they'll be able to do what they like.

It's backfired twice, and it looks like the gooseberry fools are at it again.

2015 - The Carlton Tavern in Kilburn was going to be announced as getting Grade II listed status. A few days before the announcement, the property developer who owned it had it knocked down without permission. Brilliantly, Westminster City Council ordered the developer to "recreate in facsimile the building as it stood immediately prior to its demolition". They had to rebuild it, brick by brick, within 18 months, and were not allowed to sell the site until the pub had been rebuilt.

2021 - The Punch Bowl in Ribble Valley - a Grade-II listed pub built in the 1720s - was illegally demolished by the developer owners, who said they "grew tired of waiting for the council". They wanted to turn it into a strawberry floating caravan site. Ribble Valley Borough Council issued an enforcement order, saying the structure must be rebuilt to its original plan, based on architecture records.

2023 - The Crooked House, a Dudley landmark, and an amazing building from 1765, run as a pub since the 1940s:

Late July - sold to a private buyer for "alternative use".
5 August - the unoccupied building "catches fire". Fire engines are prevented from getting to the site by a giant mound of soil that has been dumped on the approaching driveway.
7 August - South Staffordshire Council inspect the site and agree to the removal of three elements of the first-floor front elevation only, to avoid weak parts of the structure from falling.
8 August - the developer sends in the bulldozers:

They cannot be allowed to get away with this gooseberry fool. I am so bloody furious.

Fines and orders to rebuild should also be followed up with long jail sentences.

They definitely should. It's pre-planned, wanton destruction of heritage, in the pursuit of profit. Financial penalties aren't enough, and clearly aren't a deterrent.

I mean, it seems absurd that they could rebuild it, and that's probably what they're counting on, but strawberry float them. Let them have the endless expense of trying.

Even without the enormous pile of earth deliberately blocking the driveway to prevent the fire service doing a speedy job this would look far too suspicious to be purely coincidental.

Hope it gets rebuilt brick by brick too.

rinks wrote:They definitely should. It's pre-planned, wanton destruction of heritage, in the pursuit of profit. Financial penalties aren't enough, and clearly aren't a deterrent.

It's also the (alleged

) arson and the blocking of the roads. Could easily lead to a loss of life.

Jail them. Seize their entire property portfolio and use it for socially beneficial purposes (social housing, community centers, offices for charitable and voluntary organisations etc).

There was a crooked man, and he had a crooked smile.
He placed a crooked building plan upon a crooked stile.
He built a crooked wall, to stop the firemen's douse,
and not a soul could stop him burning down the crooked house.

SEP wrote:Jail them. Seize their entire property portfolio and use it for socially beneficial purposes (social housing, community centers, offices for charitable and voluntary organisations etc).

This.

I went there years ago and it was pretty cool to go in.

Now, it's all gone and it was unbelievable what they've done to it. :evil:

Property developers belong in the same circle of hell as landlords.

One of my old mates from school now runs a pub in Halesowen and has been rightly up in arms about this recently. In addition to the pub in Kilburn, Private Eye's Nooks and Corners column also speaks about many derelict but beautiful Scottish buildings that have "went on fire." It's an absolute disgrace done in nothing more than naked private greed

That should be rebuilt and they should get fined, really heavily. At the very least.

Looked like a great wee spot.

Bet that is going to be expensive to rebuild. :shifty:

I remember going there as a kid a couple times when visiting Himley Hall.

Yep shocking stuff, these banana splits should be taken for all they've got.

There's loads more of this gooseberry fool going on at a lower, more insidious level as well - so many old pubs getting bought out by developers who have to prove that they don't work as a business anymore so they can apply for a change of purpose for the location so they deliberately mismanage them and run them into the ground so they can do this kind of gooseberry fool.

I hate people who do this gooseberry fool with a passion. Hope they get the proverbial book thrown at them, and the corner hits them square in the damn eye.

strawberry floating travesty. All these beautiful old buildings full of character, gone so some greedy banana split can put some crap modern houses on the land.

Driven by a perverse system where it's easier to get planning permission on a site of a ruined pub opposed to the massive field next to it.

rinks wrote:This keeps strawberry floating happening...

What local authority area is (was) the pub in?

Knoyleo wrote:Property developers belong in the same circle of hell as landlords.

If TV is anything to go by most property developers are also landlords as well which makes them even worse.

Crooked House illegal demolition: council enforces order to rebuild!

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