A DOWNEND pub has been given a new licence, more than four years after it last opened.
The White Swan in North Street shut in 2021, having traded for around 140 years.
It was sold for just over £300,000 the following year, after operator Admiral Taverns said it did not have a “long-term sustainable future”.
But owner and property developer Andrew Morgan’s plans to convert the main pub building into housing were thrown out by South Gloucestershire Council last year, so he applied for a premises licence to sell alcohol.
The council’s licensing sub-committee voted to award the new licence, which also allows live and recorded music seven days a week, in October.
Four neighbours objected to the application, saying that under previous ownership the pub was blighted by antisocial behaviour, including drug dealing and customers urinating in the street.
One resident said: “In the summers we could not sit in our garden due to noise disturbance.”
Another said sex acts had been captured by CCTV in a lane next to the pub and that pub-goers had regularly shouted and swore.
But Mr Morgan told the panel: “I am a completely new applicant from any previous owner, landlady or landlord. We’re looking to turn it back into a well-managed pub.
“It’s not in our interest to have a pub that’s running wild, because we own property at the back and to the right-hand side of the pub, with family members or tenants living in, so it’s not in our interest to have a saloon-type pub.
“I want it to be a pub where you and your wife or partner or boyfriend or whatever are happy to go in there, have a drink, without the fear of a fight breaking out in the corner.
“The troublemakers have drifted off somewhere else.”
Asked by the panel why he wanted to turn reopen the pub, Mr Morgan said: “Because South Gloucestershire Council rejected all my planning applications to turn it into houses, at the expense of £60,000.”
Last month Mr Morgan told the Voice the licence application was intended to “keep options open” for the future of the building, and is only one of several potential commercial uses.
He said it would take at least a year before renovations made the building weathertight again.
Avon & Somerset Police licensing officer Wes Hussey said the previous landlady was removed following “covid-related parties” in 2021 but she had no connection with Mr Morgan.
He said police had agreed conditions on times for music and closing windows.
The panel granted a premises licence for live music from 1pm to 10pm daily, recorded music indoors from 1pm to 11pm, recorded music outdoors until 10pm and alcohol sales from 1pm to 11pm.
Meeting report by Adam Postans, Local Democracy Reporting Service