The company that illegally demolished the Punch Bowl Inn has been denied permission to build an electric motorsport site on green belt land.

Ribble Valley Borough Council has refused a planning application submitted by Donelan Trading Limited to build an electric quad outdoor motorsport facility on green belt land at their home on Carr Hall, on Whalley Road, Langho.

The plans would have seen a two-storey building with tracks around the green belt land for people to hire out quad bikes and drive around on tracks.

The legislation around green belt land is that it can be redeveloped for ‘essential outdoor sport and recreation’.

The application was met with a number of objections, with both Billington and Langho Parish Council and Wilpshire Parish Council objecting to the plans.

Billington and Langho Parish Council say in a document that they believe ‘some of the proposed tracks for the bikes have already been constructed over the past few years’ and ask the council that if necessary, they should ‘issue enforcement notices for any unauthorised and premature engineering work on the site’.

The council said that they were refusing the application because it ‘does not represent appropriate facilities for outdoor sport or recreation, nor does it preserve the openness of Green Belt land’ on which they were looking to build the site.

The report said: “It therefore falls to be inappropriate development in the green belt and no 'very special circumstances' have been demonstrated that would outweigh the harm to the green belt by definition of this being inappropriate development.”

The council added that the development would ‘result in the introduction of an incongruous, anomalous and discordant form of development that fails to respond positively to the character of the area, fails to relate well to existing built-form and would result in development that significantly compromises the visual and spatial openness of the green belt’.

The council also said that the proposal would impact on the protected woodland and that the application ‘does not provide adequate information in relation to the potential impacts on trees within the woodland as well as the potential impacts on nature conservation habitats and protected species’. 

Finally, the council said that it fails to provide an acceptable surface water sustainable drainage strategy.

In 2020, Donelan Trading Ltd submitted a planning application for a leisure development including electric motorsport adventure facility and support building, cafe building, natural playground and 10 glamping pods at Carr Hall which was also refused.

Earlier this month, Andrew Donelan and Nicola Donelan and their daughter Rebecca Donelan, all of Carr Hall, Whalley New Road, along with the company Donelan Trading Limited were fined for the demolition of the Punch Bowl Inn by the courts and ordered by the planning inspectorate to rebuild the pub.

The courts also fined David Cotterell, of Percliff Way, Philips Road, Blackburn and Brian Ingleby, Hollowhead Avenue, Wilpshire, and company Percliff Plant and Haulage Limited, which carried out the demolition.

Carr Hall is the former home of a garden centre and is now used by the Donelan family to operate their businesses.