THE NEW owners of a previously disused pub and hotel in Whitchurch say it’s hardly worth making rooms available to guests again, given the huge cost of making them fire safety compliant.

Last month fire safety inspectors imposed a prohibition notice on the Crown, preventing the building being used for ‘sleeping and or resting’.

“There is no working fire alarm to alert people in the event of fire,” their report said and observed that the means of escape from sleeping areas is not suitable or sufficient.

The prohibition notice is still listed as in force on the National Fire Chiefs Council Enforcement Register.

But owner Theresa Gwillim, on whom the notice was served, said that this had arisen from a risk assessment carried out there in advance of potentially bringing the rooms back into use.

“We are a new business, just since March, and the rooms are not occupied,” she confirmed.

“We are giving it a full refurb, and while the pub is already open, we are trying to work out whether it’s worth letting the five rooms.

“We have been told it will cost around £25,000 for a full fire alarm system, so we probably won’t.”

Before Ms Gwillim and her husband Fred took on the inn, it had been unoccupied for around two years, having previously traded as the Whitchurch Spice Tandoori Indian Restaurant and Takeaway.

When the family acquired the pub’s leasehold in November last year, they set about refurbishing and bringing the bar area up to a good standard before The Crown’s soft reopening in March and its formal opening at Easter, complete with refurbished kitchen.

Ms Gwillim said that after the frantic activity of getting the pub ready for business and its external make over, would be when they would investigate upgrading the inn’s guest suites.