Two Herefordshire former Beefeater pub-restaurants will no longer be officially classed as pubs, meaning they can be more easily put to other uses.

The Starting Gate off Holmer Road, Hereford, and the Travellers Rest at the start of the M50 northeast of Ross-on-Wye closed at the start of July, as part of a national programme by owner Whitbread PLS to either sell off or redevelop dozens of such outlets.

Just before this, Whitbread had put in planning applications for certificates of lawfulness (“CLEUDs”) reclassifying the two as restaurants rather than pubs, based on food sales having made up most of their revenue for over a decade.

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In planning law, a change of use becomes accepted if it can be shown to have been the practice for over ten years.

With a “use category” of their own, pubs have special protection in planning which is not extended to restaurants.

The Starting Gate, a Beefeater in HerefordThe Starting Gate, a Beefeater in Hereford (Image: Google Street View)

A representative of CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale which attempts to protect threatened pubs, objected to Whitbread’s moves saying that the Travellers Rest, like the Starting Gate, “is and always has been a pub in the accepted sense, i.e. somewhere you can go to just buy and consume a drink.

“It is not, and never has been, a restaurant.”

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Holmer resident Dr Gary Wood added that during the last three years he had visited the Starting Gate, users of its beer garden placed any food orders at the bar, “as is typical of food service in a public house”.

CAMRA said Whitbread’s plan was “to integrate [such] premises into the adjoining hotel by making them resident-only, or converting them to hotel accommodation, or both”.

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Both the Starting Gate and Travellers Rest are alongside Premier Inns, the successful budget hotel chain which Whitebread also runs.

In accepting Whitbread’s two CLEUD requests, planning officer Joshua Evans concluded that in each case, “the internal configuration of the premise was primarily utilised for the purpose of food consumption with limited provision for consumption of beverages”.