IN a bid to make his business viable, the owner of the Packhorse Inn, St Blazey, is planning to build eight houses in the grounds and introduce a restaurant and accommodation to the Grade II Listed pub’s offering.

Listed Building and planning consent has been applied for to build the new houses with an access road, parking and garden spaces on unused land to the west of the pub. Six of the houses will have three bedrooms while the remaining two will be two-bedroomed. The applicant, Wayne Brown, also plans to improve the pub with the construction of a building to provide a new kitchen on the ground floor and letting rooms on the first floor.

The single storey lean-to extension would be demolished and replaced with a single-storey accommodation for the pub restaurant. A smoking shelter will also be constructed.

The application points out that the Packhorse is one of the few surviving freehouses in Cornwall and has no support from any brewery or corporate company. It says that the business was already in decline prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and survived on wet drink sales alone because there is no food offering or accommodation. It adds: ‘In short, the business has been forced to change or it will cease to trade.’