A DERELICT pub which stopped trading more than five years ago will finally make way for new homes.
Councillors have approved plans to pull down The Contented Pig, on Fratton Road, Fratton, and replace it with 11 one-bedroom and two-bedroom flats.
A report presented at a planning meeting said councillors were satisfied the four-storey building wouldn’t have a serious effect on St Mary’s Churchyard Conservation Area, of which the land is a part.
Council officers added the pub hadn’t been a good influence on the area since its closure in late 2007. As reported, it has been subject to repeated vandalism.
Councillor Margaret Foster, of Charles Dickens ward, which the pub comes under, said the move was a long time coming.
‘It’s been an eyesore for a long time,’ she said.
‘The building that will be there in its place will be lovely. It’s absolutely perfect and in keeping with that area.
‘It’s going to have the wow factor. People will drive down Fratton Road and say “what a lovely building” rather than negative things about an empty, derelict pub.
‘I used to be part of a darts team and whenever I went to the pub to play the only other people there would be the other team and a couple of regulars, and that was 20 years ago.
‘The pub wasn’t a popular place to go, so I was all in favour of this move.
‘It’s a real shame that pubs across Portsmouth are closing, but people just don’t have the money any more.
‘It looks like we are on the verge of another recession, which will make things even harder for publicans.’
Previous designs submitted to the council’s planning committee in August last year were described as ‘just not good enough’ at the time by its chairman, Lib Dem councillor Lee Hunt.
This time around council officers said the proposal ‘represents a significantly improved design solution that has both addressed and overcome the reason for the refusal of the previous application’.
The venue has previously been known as the Shipwright’s Arms, Museum Gardens, Frog and Frigate and the Landmark until it became The Contented Pig in 1992.
Though the pub began selling its own ale in the 1980s and regularly held live music, it wasn’t enough to stop its closure.
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