Sandwell pub car park car wash rejected by council as ‘inappropriate’
A plan to turn a former pub car park into a new car wash and valeting service has been rejected by a council.
The car park of the former Old Furnace pub in Waterfall Lane, Old Hill, Sandwell, would have been converted into a hand car wash and ‘specialist’ valeting service, according to the application by Saeed Snober.
However, planning officers at Sandwell Council have turned the application down, saying it was “inappropriate".
The report outlining the rejection said the car was “poorly designed and incompatible with its surroundings.”
“The proposed car wash by virtue of its design, appearance, use of materials and siting, has a poor visual relationship with surrounding properties; and is abrupt and incongruous,” the report added.
Plans to convert the eyesore pub, which closed in 2010, into flats were approved by Sandwell Council earlier this year.
The proposed opening hours were 9am to 6.30pm every day, with plans to carry out services on around ten cars a day by appointment only.
The pub, on the corner of Waterfall Road and Grange Lane, closed in 2010, and the tired building had been the subject of different applications to convert it into offices, a shop and new homes.
Sandwell Council agreed for the pub to be demolished in 2021 to make way for new homes, but the work was never carried out.
An application to convert the building into a shop was rejected in 2024 with the council saying it would prefer to see the pub’s car park reinstated to prevent the road – and bend – from becoming obstructed.
The old car park, which has previously been used to store cars and vans after the pub closed and is now fenced off, was not included within the boundary of the application for the two new flats.
A planning application said the land was also owned by applicant Fakher Shafia Ali.
Having closed in 2010, the Old Furnace was quickly converted into a three-bed home without planning permission. A retrospective application was later approved by Sandwell Council.
A move to build five new homes after demolishing the pub was also approved by Sandwell Council in 2021, but never went ahead.
This came after a separate application to convert the pub into offices and storage space for a landlord and property developer was rejected a year earlier.
