Sir, – I was interested to read your report (D&S, Oct 5) about the “loss” of the Travellers’ Rest, Skeeby as our village pub due to its change of use to an antiques/reclamation dealer.

Many other villages and towns, including Bedale recently, are now finding to their community’s cost, that there is a loophole in the planning regulations that allows pubs to be bought, closed and re-opened as retail outlets without the need for formal change of use planning permission.

However, in the case of Skeeby, the consent for carrying out renovations by the owner, Jon Whitfield, was, I understand, given specifically to enable the building to be re-opened as a pub, I have asked Richmondshire District Council if special circumstances therefore do not apply here.

Your article quoted Mr Whitfield extensively, including a statement suggesting that the community pub company’s offer to buy the pub was not for market value.

I would ask: what is market value for a building reduced internally to a stripped-out shell, half full of rubble, with no fittings, services, wall plaster, ceilings, or even windows at the rear? Mr Whitfield, who claims to be an experienced property developer, seems to think that if he adds together what he paid for the (fully furnished and fitted) pub plus his outlay on external renovation and internal demolition, the answer will be the current market value.

Mr Whitfield needs to wake up and realise that, in the current economic climate, property investment and development doesn’t work like that. Simply put, Mr Whitfield has put himself in a “negative equity” situation, and neither the Skeeby Community Pub group, nor, it seems, anyone else is going to act as his guardian angel by bailing out by paying him £80,000 more than the property, in its current state, is worth.

Marie Church was quoted in your article that this latest development was certainly a set-back to seeing the Travellers’ Rest re-open as a pub.

But this is not the end of the matter. There is strong support in the village for the community pub campaign and both local and national government claim to want to see village pubs retained as the traditional focal point of communities, not changed into shops and houses.

RICHARD WRIGHT Skeeby, near Richmond.