Time is running out on residents’ hopes of saving their last village pub after plans to convert the former watering hole into part of a house were approved.

The Villager in Blackheath has been at the centre of a long-drawn out campaign by resident groups, with support from ward members and the MP Jeremy Hunt, to keep the cherished heart of the village open since its closure more than 15 years ago.

Waverley Borough Council’s planning committee green lit the pub’s demise in 2024 but residents banded together to challenge the decision through the courts.

A Judicial Review lodged in October 2024 found in their favour, agreeing there had been a lack of appropriate consultation over the plans.

Waverley Borough Council was said to have to pay £50,000 to cover the cost of its decision. A single survey that failed to ask the “pertinent question” of whether people wanted to have a cafe, pub, or place or meet for food and drink in the village, was enough to persuade the borough’s officers this time round, that box had now been ticked.

The pub originally shut in 2011 and was converted into two homes. Planning permission agreed a space must be kept as a public house.

Despite this, it never reopened and was sold on in a private transaction – which prevented the community from taking part in the bidding.

The new owner has since been hoping to change the pub section into housing – and merge it with the adjoining property.

Residents, MPs, beer advocates, town councils and resident groups hoped its place as a valued community asset would help save it, but its fate looks sealed after again winning planning permission at the January 2026 meeting of Waverley Borough Council’s planning committee.

Officers told the meeting that there were 10 alternative community and public house sites within two miles available to Blackheath residents.

They said the pub had been marketed for six years but nobody had come forward to take it on as it was deemed unviable from a business perspective.

Throughout the meeting, members of the public had to be told to remain quiet, with one threatened with removal.

The officer added there was a “passion for retaining a local pub” and that it was “understandable and admirable, but that such aspiration must ultimately be balanced against the practical realities of operating a viable business in this location.”

Speaking against the application was Richard WIlliams. He said that Waverley ratepayers already had to cover the £50,000 costs after the previous application was challenged and that the new application was making all the same mistakes again.

He said there has been a lack of detailed consultation and the test should be communal benefit rather than financial.

Town Councillor Max Gibbs spoke on behalf of “the people of Blackheath” and said he was trying to protect “their right to a community meeting place, serving drinks and food”.

He said: “We’ve just heard about the previous application, the judicial review, and its own failures and waste of an estimated £50,000 of taxpayer money.

The survey, however, was meaningless as “the one obvious pertinent question ‘do you want to have a cafe pub to meet for drinks or food in Black Heath” was not asked.

“Survey statistics report that half the village support this proposal, an outcome blindly and misleadingly copied in the planning report.

“And how can you know this is misleading? Well the village contains just over 90 households, the planning portal has responses from over 50 of these and of these replies more than 80 per cent object.

“These numbers aren’t from a blind survey with biased questions these are Waverley residents with names and addresses who sat down and made the effort to write and who do not support this application.”

Cllr Jane Austin (Conservative: Bramley and Wonersh) said: “If we approve this application again, on materially the same grounds that were found wanting before, it’s difficult to see how we avoid the same future outcome.

“Another legal challenge, another quashing in our future, yet more uncertainty for the council and cost and for the community.”

Applicant Ben Moore said the plans represented the “real wishes and concerns among the residents of Blackheath, especially those that felt intimidated by the behaviour of the pub committee.”

He added that there had been a “campaign of misinformation that has been put forward by the group that opposed this application.”

He said claims huge numbers wanted to see the site returned as a pub were simply not true as it has sat empty for 15 years, while the layout meant the site couldn’t work as a business.

He said: “The majority of the village can see that it isn’t viable.” The committee backed the bid with seven votes in favour, three abstentions, and two against.