Dales landlady vows to fight legal action after pub closure

A Yorkshire Dales landlady facing legal action after closing her pub and opening a tearoom instead has vowed to keep fighting her case.

The Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority (YDNPA) has issued two enforcement notices to Jo Cox after she carried out building work at the Moorcock Inn, at Garsdale, without planning permission.

As well as opening a small tearoom in the former manager’s flat at the rear of the building, the bar area is being used by the owner as her living room..

The landlady appealed to the Planning Inspectorate over the notices, but this was rejected.

Ms Cox has now got six months to comply with the enforcement notices or face further legal action.

The notices require her to stop using parts of the building as a tearoom and self-contained accommodation.
She must also stop using areas of the pub’s former bar area as her home, as well as removing a staircase, partitions, and fixtures and fittings associated with the building being used as residential accommodation.

But the landlady has vowed to keep fighting her case and has accused YDNPA officers of refusing to engage with her.

The business owner, who has launched a petition to save the tearoom, said: “I haven’t had a proper hearing at all — they haven’t listened to me.
“I asked for a meeting with one officer and they said they ‘were going to waste their resources’ by meeting me.”

Ms Cox said she had been accused of running the pub down before its closure, but said she had “tried her damnedest” to keep the business running over the last ten years. “Pubs everywhere are struggling, unfortunately. We’re not in any village and we’re not a destination pub like Tan Hill, for example.”

Ms Cox said that before closing the pub she was having to use her savings to pay the bills. “Cask ale only keeps a week or so and we were having to pour it away because we weren’t selling enough. I was staying open to 10pm or 11pm at night, and I’d get one or two people. That wasn’t enough to cover the wages of staff. It’s also incredibly hard to find any staff in the first place. A lot of the people living around here are my age, they don’t want to work nights or weekends.”

In response to the criticism, YDNPA member champion for development management, Andrew Murday, said enforcement action was a last resort, which the authority took to retain public confidence in the planning system.

He added: “When the Moorcock Inn was turned into a dwelling, without any public consultation, we received complaints from local residents.
“This led to the authority serving enforcement notices in May last year – and we have engaged fully with the proprietor of the inn about the reasons for doing so.  Last month, an independent planning inspector upheld these enforcement notices, and they must now be complied with.
“We cannot force the proprietor to re-open the Moorcock Inn as a public house. But we can enforce that the building is not used as a dwelling house.

Mr Murday added: “My hope is that the proprietor can find a way of using the Moorcock Inn that serves the interests of the community and the local economy. We stand ready to serve during any planning process.”