In July this year, the South East Essex Green Party launched a petition and community campaign to save the Railway Hotel Southend from inappropriate development.
Leading members of the local Green Party submitted the paperwork officially nominating The Railway Hotel to be considered an Asset of Community Value by Southend City Council, and additionally launched a petition calling for the Council to take steps to safeguard the building. Within a few days, our petition amassed over 1700 signatures from concerned locals and gained considerable media coverage.
In an update received in October, Southend Council confirmed that thanks to this campaign this heritage building is now acknowledged as an Asset of Community Value (ACV), and is rightly protected under this listing.
Read the statements posted to the Friends of the Railway campaign page:
7 Oct 2022.
GOOD NEWS!
We have today received confirmation from Southend City Council that our application to have The Railway Hotel listed as an Asset of Community Value has been successful!
The Council has formally recognised The Railway’s huge contribution to our city as a community and cultural venue (and much much more) and has acknowledged that it is an integral part of our city’s cultural infrastructure. ACV listing now means we have another safeguard against irresponsible development, and it means that we’re one step closer to having the pub reopen for our community’s benefit.
I’d like to thank the 1600+ of you that signed our petition so far and the many of you who helped our campaign by emailing your councillors, sharing our updates, and helping us galvanise the support for a future for the pub. Without your help, it’s possible that we might have seen the pub added to the sadly growing list of great boozers we’ve lost to history.
I’d additionally like to thank the South East Essex Green Party for being the initial signatories on the ACV Nominations paperwork, and for supporting us with this campaign. Thanks also to those many councillors at SCC who also lent us your support.
SO, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
Gaining an Asset of Community Value (ACV) listing means that the council officially recognises that a building has significant community value; in our case as a much-loved community and cultural pub, and it recognises in planning decisions that it should be protected under applicable legislation for this purpose only. In short, it means that the council agrees with us that the Pub should remain a Pub!
Currently, the building is owned by Heineken/Star. This ACV listing additionally means that if the brewery wants to sell the property, it is bound to notify the community of its intention to sell, and a moratorium is placed on the sale of the building, giving the community six months to arrange the finances to buy the pub at market-rate from the current owners. This would allow the community to buy the pub itself directly, and then continue to run the venue for the good of the city as a community-owned social enterprise/cooperative.
Put simply, it means that the current owners can’t just sell off the property to irresponsible developers that would just trash the place. The ACV listing gives us the safeguard that the community has a Right To Bid first. We want that option.
The Railway will now remain on this list of Assets of Community Value for five years. The current owners, Heineken/Star have the legal right to object, but we’d strongly advise they don’t waste their money. Southend has very clearly sent the message that we love The Railway, and won’t see it tarnished, degraded, or sold off.
WHAT’S NEXT?
Please continue to share your stories of how important the pub is to our community!
Just because we now have an ACV listing, we can’t become complacent. The brewery still has the ability to ruin the pub for good itself; we’ve just made it much harder for them to treat it as a disposable asset to fling off at the highest price for their shareholders’ profits.
We’re also completely aware we’d be going up against a faceless multinational’s well-paid litigation team if it ever does end up in court. We’re not particularly scared tbh, but as a community, we need to be collectively ready for that fight.
This is only the first stage of bringing the pub back into community hands. When the time comes, we need to be ready to rally our supporters to buy, and then reopen the pub. That is a LOT of work. We want to do this, and we’ll need your support.
If you haven’t already, please encourage friends and family to visit our website and sign the petition. We’re still asking Southend Council to include the Pub on its’ list of Heritage Assets, as we think the pub deserves recognition and protection for its heritage credentials too. Keep applying the pressure!
26 July 2022.
SAVE THE RAILWAY HOTEL
Please sign and share this petition to ask Southend Council to help Save The Railway Hotel, Southend.
We’re asking Southend Council to list The Railway as an “Asset of Community Value”, and to add the building to the Council’s Local List of Historic Buildings.
Please support our efforts, by adding your name to this petition now:
SIGN: https://railwayhotelsouthend.co.uk/
WHY IS THIS PETITION IMPORTANT?
Until its closure in late 2020, The Railway Hotel was one of Southend’s most prominent counter-cultural landmarks, beloved by a majority of residents from across the city. Its impact to the city, and its sad and premature loss is felt today by many – even far beyond the boundaries of the county.
The building itself bears important local architectural and historical significance to the city, on its own merits and as one of the borough’s first public houses in what is now the city centre. Its location, placed within the Banks & Barry ‘Cliff Town’ Estate (now the Milton Conservation Area), also lends further evidence to the historical significance of the building to the wider story of Southend.
Currently, the building (we feel wrongly) is neither listed on the National Heritage List for England (NHLE) nor is it on the Local List of Historic Buildings. This means that there is currently no protection for this Public House in terms of conservation (architecturally or aesthetically), and as a result, there is little stopping an application of irresponsible development concluding in the loss of one of the city’s assets.
The Railway was more than a beloved local pub; it was the crucible in which an entire generation of music, art, and culture was created and thrived in Southend. Known for its stalwart support for local, national, and international musicians of all genres, The Railway was primarily a community-spirited live music venue, as much as it was a popular public house.
Beyond the bricks and mortar, its patrons, the Railway Community is a 5.5k strong eclectic diaspora of local art and music lovers that otherwise would have never shared one space. A glistening example of community cohesion, The Railway represented the very best of what Southend’s thriving cultural scene could offer, and was for decades one of the town’s (now city’s) liveliest venues. The pub gave a second home to a whole family of local artists and customers, many of which now feel bereft of a similar space in the city.
The Railway’s community engagement stretched beyond that of just a pub, as for years it proudly supported those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities through a legacy of accessible and inclusive events, and also fundraising tens of thousands for various charities through events. The pub was proudly a ‘safe space’ for LGBTIQA+ patrons and happily played home to the alternative cultural scene (by all definitions) in Southend. The contribution The Railway has made to our city and its story cannot be underestimated.
Sadly, despite overcoming several difficult financial periods in recent history, the Coronavirus pandemic proved too much of a financial strain on the business, and the previous operators closed to the public for the last time on 31st October 2020.
In the past 1.5 years, it had been hoped by the community that now the building has been relinquished back to the responsibility of the Brewery/PubCo, they would reopen this busy and popular city-centre pub for eager trade. This unfortunately hasn’t happened, and the building remains empty and shuttered. As it stands, the community has been given no assurances of the long-term security of this beloved institution, and we now feel the local authority should assist in bringing this venue back into the hands of the community that wishes to see it reopen.
We believe fundamentally that this building must remain a community pub.
The Railway is a cultural icon to our city, and is an asset that cannot be lost in the same ways other significant venues are. We have reason to believe that this beloved pub is at risk of being lost forever.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
We’ve already asked Southend Council to list The Railway as an ACV, and to include the building on the Council’s Local List of Historic Buildings. We believe that right now, this is one of the most effective ways we have of ensuring The Railway will reopen as a community pub.
To help us save The Railway:
– Please SIGN and SHARE this petition.
– Tell everyone; help us get the word out that we need to act quick.
– Please consider writing to your Ward Councillors and ask them to support the ACV listing.