PLANNING permission is being sought to convert an empty Wellington public house into a community use facility with offices and a three-bedroom house.

Ashley and Jess Vellacott, of Sleeps12.com Ltd, want to develop a community café and youth club space on the The Dolphin Inn ground floor with offices above for their travel agency business.

Planning agent Claire Alers-Hankey, of GTH, said discussions with Wellington Town Council had been shaping the community use aspect of the Dolphin proposals.

Ms Alers-Hankey said the community space could potentially be used as a youth club incorporating the café/coffee zone with perhaps a pool table or table tennis area, as well as for a local police and health visitor drop-in service.

She said the Dolphin, in Waterloo Road, was a distinctive feature of the town ‘famed for its colourful murals’.

But the pub closed in January, 2020, and had been vacant ever since.

The site comprised the main public house building with three floors of accommodation to the front and later, modern single-storey additions, a detached two-storey garage building, and part of the former pub garden which was now overgrown and derelict.

Ms Alers-Hankey said an attempt to have the pub registered as an asset of community value was rejected in November, 2020.

She said the town council had confirmed its interest in using the ground floor of the Dolphin as a community space along similar lines to plans for the soon-to-open former Kings Arms pub in the town centre.

Ms Alers-Hankey said: “It was agreed the former Dolphin Inn is in a part of Wellington that currently lacks any sort of community space and there is a demand for a space for youth groups and drop-in clinics for the police and health visitors, for example.”

She said the Wellington Place Plan referred to the potential for investing in and refurbishing the former Dolphin pub as a community asset, potentially with residential units above.

Ms Alers-Hankey said: “This clearly supports re-use of the former pub building to alternative uses that offer a community facility of some sort, and is not concerned with the Dolphin remaining as a public house.”

The site had been put on the market for sale in August, 2023, but there was no interest in it as a pub, which was also the case with other former pubs in Wellington, such as the Kings Arms.

Ms Alers-Hankey said: “The way in which communities socialise has drastically changed over the last 10 to 15 years, with the popularity of pub drinking dropping significantly.

“This has left a number of former pub properties in Wellington vacant, falling into a state of disrepair due to lack of investment and maintenance, and contributing nothing toward the local community.”

“The proposed use of a café/community space and offices provide an opportunity for the property to function as a facility that the local community can benefit from, and significantly tidy up the site, which has become an eyesore.

“The development will deliver clear economic, social, and environmental benefits.”