So the scheme was drawn to the village's own design guidance, at a number the village grain could absorb, with the listed pub left standing and trading at the front of the site. The same discipline ran across every site in the portfolio, plotted above.
The full story
Surplus pub land is rarely the easy kind. The sites in the Punch portfolio were village pubs at the heart of their communities, often listed, frequently in a conservation area or open countryside, and usually in places where new housing was not welcome. Every appraisal had to answer the same question fast enough to inform a commercial decision, and credibly enough to survive planning: how much deliverable value is really here?
At the White Hart the constraints stacked up on a single site. A Grade II listed former coaching inn sat at the frontage and had to stay open and trading throughout. The ground flooded locally under heavy rain. Two redundant cesspits had to be recommissioned and reconnected to the public sewer, and that work had to be sequenced so the pub never closed for it.
The highway added its own requirements: visibility splays onto Nayland Road, and a new length of footpath along the frontage. Houses abut the eastern and southern boundaries, so the layout had to hold the new homes off those edges while still leaving room for a drive to serve six houses behind the terrace.
The village Design Statement is where the 91 per cent comes from. It is a plain description of the audience for anything built here. Reading it early and designing to it is cheaper than arguing with it later, and it is the same discipline every site in the portfolio got.
