A FORMER pub which provided many a pint for thirsty villagers is to become a family home after planners backed a conversion bid.

Members of South Lakeland District Council's planning committee reluctantly agreed that The Swan pub at Little Urswick was no longer a viable business and they supported an application to turn it into a house.

The hostelry has been shut since March 2000 and applicant Mike Dean argued it could not be successfully restored.

Mr Dean's agent advised councillors in a letter that Scottish Newcastle breweries had decided the village pub was not a profitable enterprise and they would not supply it.

Another application from Mr Dean to try to run the premises as a combined shop and pub with letting bedrooms plus a garage was turned down by planners in 2002, due to concerns that a shop would damage the viability of the post office in Great Urswick.

SLDC's head of development control Peter Ridgway advised members to back the latest application.

"It will be a loss to see the pub go, but it's not an unreasonable request for him to make.

"The applicant did try to get a package together to keep the pub as a viable concern when he made the application for the shop.

Your decision to refuse the shop has really undermined my ability to justify continuing to running it as a public house," he told councillors.

Coun Bob Bolton thought the closure was inevitable as more people opted to drink at home and breweries made it difficult for tenants to make a living from small pubs.

"Tenants start to do well and of course the brewery puts up the rent because it's based on barrelage, on how well you are doing. You are in a never-ending circle," he said.

Mr Dean welcomed the decision but said he ultimately blamed councillors for the loss of pub since they had rejected his attempts to develop The Swan as a going concern by adding a shop.

February 7, 2003 11:31