Plans to demolish the fire-hit Cricketers at Calcutt and build a new pub, a 208 sq m shop and seven flats are open for comment until 31 October 2026.
The burnt-out Cricketers pub at Calcutt, on the southern edge of Knaresborough, would be pulled down and replaced with a new pub, a village shop and seven flats under plans now open for comment at North Yorkshire Council.
The application was validated on 5 October. Comments are being taken until Saturday 31 October, and the council has given itself until 30 November to decide.
What is proposed
The applicant is The Ashes Pub Company Ltd, which bought the site after the fire. The application, reference 26/06194/FUL, is in two parts.
The full application covers the pub plot itself:
- demolition of everything on the site
- a new three-storey building on the footprint of the old pub, with a shop on the ground floor and seven flats alongside and above it
- a new, purpose-built pub at the rear of the site, with a beer garden looking over Knaresborough Forest Cricket Club’s pitch
- 19 car parking spaces, two of them accessible, plus a covered store for 11 bicycles and indoor racks for 14 residents’ bikes
The outline application covers the former southern beer garden. It asks for permission in principle for two houses there, with everything except the access left for later. The applicant’s outline planning statement says that plot is to be sold to a small builder or self-builder, and the money used to fund the main scheme. An indicative layout shows two three-bedroom houses, each with its own drive off Thistle Hill.
The shop would be 208 square metres. The full planning statement says that is small enough to count as serving a local need without a formal test of whether it would draw trade from Knaresborough town centre. The new pub would have the same floorspace as the old Cricketers, the statement says.
The seven flats, set out in the design and access statement, would be:
- two one-bedroom flats of 49 and 54 square metres
- four two-bedroom flats of between 66 and 80 square metres
- one three-bedroom flat of 86 square metres on the second floor
All seven are for open-market sale or rent. The application form records no affordable homes. It also leaves the shop’s opening hours and the number of jobs as “unknown”.
Why the old building cannot be kept
The Cricketers was gutted by fire in the early hours of Tuesday 1 April 2025. North Yorkshire Police said at the time that the fire service alerted them at 4.43am, that investigators believed the fire had been started deliberately, and that a woman had been arrested on suspicion of arson. Nobody was hurt. The force’s reference for the case is 12250057010.
The pub has stood empty ever since. It was put on the market in June 2025 and then bought by the applicant.
A structural report by Harrogate engineers Blue Sky Consultants, based on visits in July 2025 and May 2026, sets out what is left. The fire destroyed most of the roof framing and large sections of the timber floors. In the old bar area the first and second floors are gone altogether, leaving that corner open to the ground. After the fire, the gable tops and chimney stacks were judged unstable and contractors brought them down into the building, where the rubble now sits on charred joists.
The outside walls look largely undamaged, the engineers say, because the fire funnelled up through the inside. But they warn that the heat, and the water used to put it out, may have weakened the brick and mortar in ways that cannot be seen. Their recommendation is demolition and rebuilding on a matching footprint.
That matters because the building is not just any pub. It began life as the Union Hotel, appears on the 1849 Ordnance Survey plan of the area, and is listed as a non-designated heritage asset in the draft Knaresborough Neighbourhood Plan. When the applicant asked the council for pre-application advice in January 2026, officers said they would prefer the building kept, especially its front elevation, and that any demolition would have to be justified with a heritage assessment and a structural survey. Both are now in the file.
The applicant’s answer is a replacement designed to echo the old pub: brick to the front, render to the sides, a slate roof, painted timber windows with stone heads and sills, and a metal-framed shopfront at ground level.
What the council said before the application went in
The pre-application advice, as summarised in the planning statement, gave the scheme a cautious green light:
- the site has an established lawful use as a pub, so replacing the pub on site meets the policy that protects community facilities
- the land is previously developed, which is one of the recognised exceptions for building in the Green Belt
- the council could show only about 2.2 years of housing land supply against the five required, which tilts the balance towards new homes
- a small shop serving a local need was acceptable in principle
- highways officers raised no objection in principle, but asked for a transport statement and an assessment of parking demand
Officers also flagged noise, cooking smells and overlooking between the pub, the shop and the flats as things the application would have to deal with. The file includes a noise assessment and a kitchen odour report.
What neighbours said
The applicant held a drop-in at Calcutt Village Hall on 19 June 2026, and says more than 70 people came. The planning statement describes the response as largely positive, with support for a new pub and a local shop, and agreement that the derelict site had become an eyesore.
Three concerns were raised and the scheme changed in response:
- Traffic. Residents feared the shop and the flats together would make day-to-day traffic worse than before. The layout was redrawn to add parking spaces, and the transport statement says there would be no greater effect on highway safety.
- Overspill parking at events. The applicant has signed an agreement with Knaresborough Forest Cricket Club to use the club’s land for overflow parking. The transport statement puts that at nine extra spaces in the cricket ground car park.
- Privacy for homes across Thistle Hill. The applicant says the separation distances meet the council’s residential design guide.
Two public comments had been logged on the council’s portal by 10 October. The Environment Agency has replied that it has no comments and did not need to be consulted. A bat survey in May and July 2026 found no bats using the building.
The portal also lists an earlier application for the same scheme, reference 26/05633/FUL, as decided. Its page is no longer available for public viewing, so we cannot say what happened to it.
What it means for you
- To comment, you have until Saturday 31 October. Use the council’s planning portal or write to North Yorkshire Council, PO Box 787, Harrogate HG1 9RW, quoting 26/06194/FUL. The site notice went up on 6 October and the application is due to be advertised in the press on 15 October.
- A decision is due by 30 November. That is the council’s target date, not a promise. If the application goes to a committee rather than being decided by officers, it would be heard by the Harrogate and Knaresborough area planning committee.
- Calcutt is about a 20-minute walk from Knaresborough station, roughly 1.3km, and the site has a bus stop at its frontage on Thistle Hill. The applicant uses both to argue that not every trip will be by car.
- Nothing on the site changes until permission is granted. The structural report says the one remaining full-height internal wall is unstable and must be shored or taken down before anyone works inside.
For other applications across the district, see our planning news page. The latest road closures around Knaresborough are on our roadworks and travel page.
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