Update on ‘forgotten’ pub restaurant due to be built next to Preston Lidl

When the Eastway Retail Hub in Fulwood was granted permission by Preston City Council in September 2018, the development was set to include a food store, drive-thru cafe and half a dozen other shops - with the proposed pub and eatery also forming a key part of the suburban shopping complex.

However, while a branch of Lidl, a collection-point Costa Coffee and outlets including Subway and Age Concern have all since opened on the site, the watering hole never materialised.

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The section of the plot reserved for the pub, on the opposite side to the completed facilities, is now overgrown and surrounded by hoardings - four years after the other businesses welcomed their first customers. But it has now emerged the venue could yet be built at any time - without the need for any further approval from town planners.

Work on developments given the green light by local authorities usually has to begin with a certain time of consent being granted - normally three years - otherwise it lapses. However, the completion of the retail elements of the Eastway scheme satisfies that criteria. That means if an operator had an appetite to build and open the pub restaurant, they could do so whenever they chose.

The fate of the forgotten venue was referred to in an application for a new housing estate nearby. Documentation for that development - on land currently occupied by the former Greyrigg Care Home - noted that the permission for the pub ”could be implemented at any point in the future”.

It is not known why the blueprint for the eating and drinking establishment has not so far got off the drawing board. The Local Democracy Reporting Service approached the agent for the original Eastway Retail Hub scheme for comment.

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The retail development was given the nod only at the fifth time of asking. It was twice rejected in earlier forms by Preston City Council in both 2014 and 2015 - and also subsequently dismissed on each occasion after appeal to a planning inspector.

The initial incarnation of the retail park was based on a vision for a larger supermarket branch and was also set to have included a petrol station. The latter had been dropped and the food store resized by the time permission was finally granted.

However, the pub restaurant featured in each iteration of the plans over the four years it took for them to be approved. It, too, had initially been proposed as a bigger facility - of 1,050 square metres - but approval ultimately came for a 900 square metre-sized venue which could one day still be built.