One of Belfast's best-known bars told to demolish beer garden extension after planning dispute
One of Belfast’s most popular bars, owned by one of the province’s biggest trade names, has been ordered to demolish part of its site.
The National Bar on High Street in the heart of the city is regularly packed with revellers, offering everything from fine dining during the day to live music in the evening and club nights over several floors of the complex.
Part of the Beannchor group, one of the best known names in the licensed trade in Northern Ireland, Belfast Council planners recently told the bar to knock down an extension to its rear beer garden.
The National’s owners have appealed the demolition order, and have also filed an application for planning approval for the extension that hasn’t been heard.
But in an enforcement notice issued over the summer, and seen by the News Letter, council planners are adamant the extension and all its fixtures and fittings must go.
Officials say the bar made “unauthorised change of use of the land to provide an extension to a beer garden”, and instruct the National’s owners to shut it down and demolish it within four months.
Planners order the business to remove shipping containers used as a bar and storage, as well as a takeaway food cabin with a serving hatch on a Skipper Street - a side road that runs past the beer garden.
Also to go are steel boundaries with wood covering that include an access gate and windows, an enclosed walkway entrance, a “tent structure”, boundary fencing in excess of two metres in height not adjacent to a road, and storage areas for bins and beer kegs.
City planners say they’ve reached their verdict as “it appears there has been a breach of planning control” on the site.
Beannchor’s finance director James Sinton told the News Letter that a planning application covering the area is making its way through the system, and reinforced that the firm has appealed the enforcement notice.
“A planning application for change of use and replacement of the temporary structure [at the rear of the National] has been in the planning system awaiting approval,” he said.
“This planning application was submitted prior to any enforcement notice, and our appeal notes this. We continue to engage with planners as the application progresses.”