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May 2020

Last Updated: 18/05/2020

Crisis galvanises fight for Kirkby Malzeard community pub

by Tim Flanagan

| 19 May, 2020

Campaigners in Kirkby Malzeard want to buy the 200 year Inn for the community. They feel the current crisis shows how the village can come together.

Henry Jenkins Community Meeting

The current crisis has given added impetus to a community group's on-going campaign to save a village pub in Kirkby Malzeard from residential redevelopment.

Dave Robinson, who is chair of The Henry Jenkins Community Pub Ltd., told The Stray Ferret:

"The coronavirus crisis has served to emphasise the need for rural communities to come together and make best use of their facilities for local residents. We are fighting to preserve something that we see as valuable to a growing parish and this is a prime example of how people are collaborating in an attempt to protect something that they see as belonging to this community."

He added:

"We are absolutely determined to save this heritage asset ..There are 153 community-owned pubs in the UK and none of them has failed. The common denominator for the success of all such ventures, is the fact that the community wants them and is ready to put its money where its mouth is."

That view is supported by 179 local people, who have committed to buy community shares at £250 apiece, towards the purchase of The Henry Jenkins Inn, named after a farm worker and butler, who is reputed to have lived to the age of 169 and died in 1669.

The Henry Jenkins Inn was more than 200 years old when it closed in 2011 and was subsequently bought by David Fielder of Fielder Holdings, who in April 2016, submitted a planning application to construct four dwellings on the site. The application was refused by Harrogate Borough Council's planning committee - a decision that was upheld at appeal.

In June 2017 the council listed the Henry Jenkins as an Asset of Community Value (ACV), and later in the year a Community Co-op was approved by the Plunkett Foundation, which supports community projects including the buy-out of pubs.

A further planning application for a single dwelling on the eastern half of the site, made by Mr Fielder's business associate Justin Claybourn, was refused by the council and is now the subject of a planning appeal, which has been postponed because of the coronavirus crisis.

An offer of £200,000 made by The Henry Jenkins Community Pub Ltd. to buy the entire site has so far been rejected by the owners.