CHINGFORD: Community and council divided over future of historic building

2:59pm Friday 19th March 2010

By Carl Brown

A COMMUNITY is at loggerheads with the council over the future of a landmark building and former pub, which was closed down following drug raids.

The Bull & Crown, in the Green, Chingford, has been boarded up and empty since the police operation last summer but its future is uncertain.

A representative of the building’s owner Atlantic Housing, Iain Duncan Smith MP and dozens of residents on Friday met to discuss possible uses for the listed building and were united in their view that it should not re-open as a bar, following years of anti-social behaviour.

Atlantic Housing Director George Leonidas said the ground floor will includes a bar, restaurant or small supermarket.

But council conservation officers want the building's traditional use, as a bar, maintained.

p> This is despite Atlantic admitting it would prefer not to establish a bar on the site as it would be more difficult to sell the flats and residents do not want a return to the problems associated with the venue in the past.

Mary Stimson, 61, of the Woodland Road residents' association, said :”We had many anti-social behaviour problems when it was a pub, people use to vandalise cars and smash bottles in the street.

Laurence Downes, 48, also of Woodland Road, said: “The Bull & Crown has been here for a long time and is a big part of Chingford's history.

“But it can't re-open as a pub because of its reputation over the last 10 years.”

The residents are overwhelmingly in favour of creating a small supermarket or developing extra flats instead.

Iain Duncan Smith said: “I will definitely have to go to the council about this, they have no right to make an insistence about that at all.

“Nobody here would ever have voted for a bar in that place because we have had so many problems in the past.”

Because of the size of the development, Atlantic is required to provide social housing, but Mr Leonidas is hoping a deal can be done to provide affordable homes on land the company owns elsewhere in the borough.

An application will be submitted as soon as the social housing and ground floor use issues are resolved, he added.