The George Tavern landlady wins legal fight against block of flats

The George Tavern Commercial Rd, E1 pictured owner/landlady Pauline Forster who has been nominated for an award for restoring her pub
Alex Lentati

The landlady of an East End pub popular with stars including Kate Moss and Sir Ian McKellen has triumphed in her battle to stop developers building a block of flats next door.

Pauline Forster has spent the past 14 years turning the Grade II listed Georgian pub The George Tavern into a heralded music venue and mecca for artists and poets. But she feared that all her hard work would be lost if Swan Housing Association were allowed to build the flats on an adjacent plot.

Mrs Forster argued that the development, in Commercial Road, Stepney, would lead to noise complaints and pose a threat to her late-night licence.

She also claimed that the flats would block out light to her upstairs studios, which have hosted photoshoots with film stars such as Tilda Swinton and Adrien Brody.

Her campaign was backed by Justin Timberlake, Kate Moss and Georgia May Jagger, and last month she took the fight to the Court of Appeal to block planning permission.

Celebrity supporter: Supermodel Kate Moss has backed the campaign
Pauline Forster

Lord Justice Laws, sitting with Lord Justice McFarlane and Lord Justice Christopher Clarke, has now ruled that the planning inspector who approved the flats had failed to “set at rest” Ms Forster’s anxieties about loss of sunlight.

He might have “misplaced” the significance of those concerns amid the welter of evidence he had to consider, said the judge. But he concluded: “The inspector was bound to deal with them (the light concerns) and did not do so.”

In 2002 Mrs Forster, an accomplished artist, sunk her savings into the 600-year-old pub, which was mentioned by both Charles Dickens and Geoffrey Chaucer. She renovated and promoted the pub’s 360-degree vista for filming and photoshoots, and has a reputation for hosting up-and-coming bands.

She told the court Friday and Saturday night gigs are the bedrock of her business, making up 82 per cent of total revenue, and a threat to her late-night licence would be devastating.

“She can’t afford to have any restriction on the live music licence, or the whole thing will become unviable,” her barrister Annabel Graham Paul told the appeal hearing. She said: “Jobs will be lost and lives affected if the George is forced to close.”

Her Save the George Tavern campaign attracted a host of celebrity supporters and tens of thousands of signatures, but she lost an earlier challenge to planning permission in the High Court.

But the Court of Appeal has now reversed that decision.

Richard Ground, for the housing association, told the court that fears about the George’s future are “misplaced” as existing homes nearby are exposed to the same level of noise from the pub and there is no history of complaints to the council.

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