Plans for new accommodation could help to save a struggling inner-city pub. Proposals to turn a function room and first floor residential flat above the Plough Inn, in Radford, into a house of multiple occupation have been submitted to Nottingham City Council.
The plans show four ensuite bedrooms, a laundry and a shared kitchen and living room area. They have been drawn up on behalf of DBSR Property Limited, which recently acquired the pub in St Peter's Street.
The ground floor is set to remain the same and carry on trading as a pub. Nottingham Brewery boss and former Plough Inn owner Philip Darby said: "As far as the pub goes it's a lifeline. If there's rent coming in from upstairs it will make the pub viable against what it is now, which is struggling like anything to make ends meet. I'm just hoping it's sooner rather than later.
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"I'm very happy the pub is going to live on, otherwise it would go the same way as so many pubs have and be closed. It's struggling to get enough people and obviously running costs of a big Georgian building like it is are horrendous."
The property company has also bought the land where Nottingham Brewery currently stands behind the pub. Last year planning permission was granted to demolish the single storey brewery building to make way for student flats. The brewery would be relocated.
Mr Darby, the brewery's managing director, said: "At the moment the pub has a function room and an old manager's flat. That's all going to be developed. That's the first move, then we'd look to moving the brewery. In a perfect world that would happen seamlessly one after the other but if the flats don't get done until the summer, then we won't be moving the brewery until 2024.
"We are sitting pretty here anyway so we are quite happy where we are. It's just that when the new management comes into the brewery and I start taking a back seat, the new site will give them more scope to expand and go into different ventures. For instance they could do their own bottling, their own kegging and that kind of thing and they could do that on site, whereas at the moment we are very restricted for space and always have been.
"Because my fellow directors and I are coming to the end of our brewing careers it wasn't something we chose to do but it's for younger blood to take on and move forward with it. We've always been reticent to move. Had we been ten years younger, but unfortunately Brexit happened, Covid happened and all of a sudden five years were wiped off the map. Basically our five-year plan has been knocked on five years so we personally won't be doing any expansion that will be down to the new regime."
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