'Trade is so bad': Pub could be closed within months
Matt Clarke, who runs the Fox & Hounds at Lulsley, has put the pub up for sale and applied for planning permission to convert it into housing.
If approved, the pub could be turned into six flats and three further homes could be built on the site.
Mr Clarke said the decision has caused "a rift" with villagers but that challenges facing the hospitality industry have hit the pub hard.
READ MORE: Pair in their 60s arrested after alleged assault near supermarket
READ MORE: Emergency services called to M5 bridge crash
READ MORE: Speeding drivers through village targeted by police
"Unfortunately, the pub's really struggling so we're trying to sell and we've put in for planning permission as well," he said.
"It's caused a bit of a rift with the community but trade is so bad.
"The hospitality trade is on its knees, the staff costs have gone through the roof, minimum wage has gone up and utilities are really expensive so it's been hard."
Speaking to the Worcester News at the pub's dog show, he said the annual event would normally require more staff but that this year, they were down to just three.
"The dog show is a boost to keep us going a bit longer," he said. "There's just three of us working today, rather than seven years ago, we'd have five or six people."
The pub is being listed for sale by estate agents Sidney Phillips, with an asking price of £495,000 for the freehold.
According to the planning application, the pub went to auction on March 26 but did not sell.
It said the applicants had asked Sidney Phillips to continue listing the property while they continue alternative uses, such as the application to turn it into homes.
"Within the next two or three months, we'll probably be shut," Mr Clarke said. "It can't be helped. We're trying everything we can."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Bank of England could cut base rate if jobs market continues to slow
The Bank of England could make cuts to interest rates if the jobs market slows down, Andrew Bailey has said. Businesses are 'adjusting employment' as a result of Chancellor Rachel Reeves' decision to raise national insurance contributions (NICs) for employers, the governor of the Bank also told The Times. Companies are 'also having pay rises that are possibly less than they would have been if the NICs change hadn't happened', Mr Bailey said. In an interview with the newspaper, the governor said the British economy was growing behind its potential. This could open up 'slack' to bring down inflation, he said, meaning prices on goods would rise less swiftly compared with earnings in future. Mr Bailey said he believes the base rate set by the Bank of England would be lowered in future, after it was held in June. The current Bank rate of 4.25%, which has a bearing on all lending in the UK – including mortgages – will be reviewed again on August 7 by the Bank's Monetary Policy Committee. 'I really do believe the path is downward,' Mr Bailey told The Times. He added: 'But we continue to use the words 'gradual and careful' because… some people say to me 'why are you cutting when inflation's above target?'' The governor's indication that lower lending rates and reduced inflation could be around the corner comes as the Government is facing pressure to improve living standards. Ms Reeves' tax and spend plans are also being constrained by the current borrowing costs, as well as downgraded growth forecasts. The Chancellor's fiscal headroom has been in part eroded by U-turns on the winter fuel payment and welfare reforms, as well as global shocks to the British economy. Some in the Labour Party, including former leader Lord Neil Kinnock and Wales's First Minister Baroness Eluned Morgan, are calling for a wealth tax to help bolster the public finances. On Sunday, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said such a tax had not been 'directly' discussed when ministers held an away day at the end of last week. But speaking to Sky News' Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme, she would not rule out tax rises at the autumn budget, only saying tax decisions would be made based on 'fairness'. Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Woman with Significant Debt Says Her Husband Doesn't Know How Much She Owes: ‘Am I Delusional?'
A woman has not told her husband that she has about $68,000 worth of debt She said she currently owns a horse that she could sell for more than $13,000, but doesn't want to lose her 'identity' as a horse owner The woman shared her story on a community forum, where the majority of commenters said she needs a major reality checkA woman said she hasn't told her husband about her significant debt — and she's asking others 'for some perspective.' The 32-year-old detailed her story in a forum on the U.K.-based community site a place where people can seek advice from others on a variety of topics. In her post titled "How bad is my situation — am I delusional?' the woman said that she and her husband are childless by choice and own a home together. She shared that she earns about $60,000 a year and currently has approximately $68,000 worth of debt. 'This has been accumulated over the last 10 years of living above my means/traveling,' she explained, adding, 'However, the thought of tackling it seems so daunting — life is so short, and there are so many things I want to do/places I want to travel.' 'My partner knows I am in debt, but not the extent,' she continued. The woman went on to say that she owns a horse that 'costs me a significant amount,' and she is wondering if she should sell the animal, given her current financial woes. The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now! 'I would get about 13.5K for him in the current market. However, being a horse owner and an equestrian is such a big part of my identity, so I am dragging my feet. Realistically, when will I be able to justify buying another horse? And I will miss the horse world very much," she wrote. 'I guess I just need some perspective on how urgent/bad my situation is, and some advice on how to proceed without getting too depressed,' the woman concluded, before adding that she only has about $680 in savings. The vast majority of commenters told the woman that she is in need of a financial wake-up call. Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 'You need to face reality,' one person said. 'Sell the horse, get 13.5K [and] use all of that to reduce the debt. When you've sold [the] horse or paid a chunk off, tell your partner the extent of things. They won't want you to spiral further, and holding onto something that colossal isn't going to be great for your relationship.' 'Your income doesn't support your lifestyle, so you need to change one of them,' someone else added. 'Meanwhile, sell the horse and start bringing down your debt. You just have to be mature about it, face reality and take some responsibility for yourself.' Another commenter said, 'Adjust your expectations. You're going to be paying off debt for years, and you're going to have to strip your life down to necessities, not wants. You might consider therapy to drill into why you're spending so much and [why] maintaining a certain image is so important.' Read the original article on People
New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
How Chelsea won the Club World Cup: Big bonuses, training ground deals and ‘scary' Palmer
When Chelsea weighed up the future of Mauricio Pochettino in May 2024, one factor that came into play was the team's involvement in the Club World Cup a year later. Sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart, along with Behdad Eghbali, the managing partner of majority owner Clearlake Capital, took the view the 2024-25 campaign and the 2025-26 season should be treated as a double season. Advertisement This presented a problem if they took a wait-and-see approach with head coach Pochettino, whose contract at Chelsea was a two-year deal ending in 2025. Chelsea did not want the disruption of introducing a new coach just before the Club World Cup, and the window to replace a coach between the Club World Cup and the 2025-26 season would be too tight, which meant they needed to stick or twist with Pochettino. The Argentinian, who is now USMNT head coach, departed and Enzo Maresca arrived. The decision divided Chelsea fans but Maresca ends his first season having secured Champions League football, a Europa Conference league trophy and now — thanks in no small part to Cole Palmer — the title of Club World Cup champions. To defeat Paris Saint-Germain's previously irrepressible team represents a spectacular achievement for a Chelsea side which had been largely unfancied before the start of the tournament. It aids the sense of a squad building momentum and developing a winning culture no matter what scepticism may exist about the competition. Here, The Athletic tells the story of how they did it. The Club World Cup has always been taken seriously in the Chelsea boardroom, even before FIFA finally secured venues, a broadcaster and sponsors during a frazzling lead-up to the inaugural expanded version of the competition. When deciding upon Pochettino's fate, Chelsea did not know the precise riches on offer but FIFA had made clear there would be the potential of Champions League-level money. In the end, Chelsea leave the United States $114 million (£84.5m) better off as the winners in the tournament. That figure will be subject to taxes and must be set against Chelsea not being able to do their own money-spinning pre-season tour, but it remains an essential windfall in the context of the Premier League's profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) and UEFA's Financial Fair Play rules. Chelsea were recently punished by UEFA with a $36m fine for breaching financial rules, while they have also already spent over £100m this summer on Joao Pedro, Jamie Gittens and Liam Delap. More arrivals are expected, with Manchester United's Alejandro Garnacho a long-term consideration. Being crowned champions of the world will thrill the club's accountants as well as their fans, given the increased commercial opportunities that status should offer, while for Palmer it could also be a transformational moment. Advertisement The England forward was one of the poster boys for this tournament, featuring heavily in promotional material and advertising throughout. It was his face which loomed large in a billboard over Times Square in the week of the final — along with the tagline 'Scary Good' — and when a Chelsea player was needed to accompany PSG's Ousmane Dembele up the Rockafeller Centre on Friday to take publicity shots on a 'girder' overlooking the city (both men were safely tethered to their seats), there was no doubt who would be picked. Palmer certainly lived up to the hype in the final, his two identical first-half finishes — and an assist for Joao Pedro — rendering what should have been an onerous task against PSG into a procession at MetLife Stadium. Speaking before the final, Tosin Adarabioyo — who became a virtually inseparable social double act with Palmer during this tournament — told reporters: 'His life has changed in the past two years. As banter sometimes I call him like a little superstar. But he handles it very well. He knows he's focused his career on football.' Palmer's post-match interviews may still cause some anxiety — DAZN had to apologise after Palmer said 'Everyone's talked a lot of s*** about us all season' to its reporter Kelly Somers — but after his match-winning turn in the final, his starpower will only grow from here. The final may ultimately have been routine, but Chelsea's journey there was anything but. Due to the convoluted criteria for qualifying, it started over four years ago in May 2021, when Thomas Tuchel's side defeated Manchester City to lift the Champions League. The club was then owned by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and is now scarcely recognisable from that night. Since then, Chelsea have been placed under sanctions owing to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Abramovich has been booted out of English football, the club has been taken over by Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly's consortium and Maresca is Chelsea's fourth head coach in a dramatic four-year period. Advertisement When Chelsea played Fluminense in the semi-final last week, Thiago Silva was the one player on the field who was in the starting XI when Chelsea beat City in 2021 — and he was representing the Brazilian side, having left last summer. Some 48 players have signed and even more have left since the new owners arrived in 2022. On the ground in the U.S., Chelsea have faced obstacles, including a daft red card for striker Nicolas Jackson in the group stages and a five-hour last 16 game against Benfica. That included an almost two-hour delay for severe weather during which some players were calling family members back home while others stretched to stay warm. Maresca, meanwhile, has had plenty of complaints. He described the circumstances in Charlotte against Benfica as a 'joke' but has also sounded off about his players' workload. Chelsea's competitive season began on August 18 last year, which makes this a 329-day campaign. He also had concerns about the temperatures his players endured in training during a Philadelphia heatwave, saying conditions made it 'almost impossible to train.' While Chelsea could not control the weather, they found other ways to try to seize a competitive advantage. They offered players bonuses on a par with those they might receive in the Premier League or Champions League. The ownership moved fast to secure Delap's signature from Ipswich Town before the tournament and also attempted to sign Gittens from Borussia Dortmund early, but that deal did not make the deadline to be registered for the group stages. When the transfer window reopened for the mid-tournament registration window, Joao Pedro was signed from Brighton and his two goals against Fluminense in the semi-final secured Chelsea a minimum of $30m for advancing to the final. The Brazilian ticked the box of the versatile attacker Chelsea wanted and he arrived in prime condition, having worked with a trainer while on vacation in Brazil. Advertisement While steps were taken to bolster the squad, the club were not prepared to hinder the overall long-term plan solely for the interests of this tournament, which is why Noni Madueke was allowed to leave between the semi-finals and final to have a medical with Arsenal. Similarly, goalkeeper Djordje Petrovic could have gone to the U.S. but he wanted assurances about being first choice which Chelsea could not give. The competition was seen as a chance for all the goalkeepers to show what they could do so a gentlemen's agreement was put in place for him to stay behind and resolve his future. He subsequently joined Bournemouth for £25m. Chelsea also splashed the cash to secure their preferred training facility. FIFA had created a brochure of training bases and hotels and told clubs it would cover up to $15,000 per day for training sites, but clubs could go it alone if they wished, though this led to complication with the Philadelphia Union. The MLS club's facilities were listed in the FIFA brochure. While Chelsea had two games in Philadelphia, so too did Flamengo, which risked the Brazilian team securing the base in accordance with FIFA's lottery system for allocating bases. Chelsea contacted the MLS franchise directly and made an agreement independent of FIFA, with the Union requesting to be removed from its brochure. Flamengo instead trained at Stockton University in New Jersey, around 50 miles from Lincoln Financial Field, while Chelsea trained much closer to the stadium and a half-hour drive to their Four Seasons Hotel in central Philadelphia, a familiar haunt for the club from previous pre-season tours. Chelsea then lined up Barry University in Miami to prepare for their round-of-16 game. They had originally hoped to top their group, which would have seen them play at Hard Rock Stadium, but they ended up in Charlotte after finishing the group phase as runners-up to Flamengo. Advertisement However, the Barry University facilities were among the most in-demand on the east coast — they were Real Madrid's first choice, only for the Spanish club to defer to Boca Juniors under FIFA's allocation system during the group stages. So Chelsea used Barry as a base until the semi-final preparations, when they moved to New York and utilized both New York City FC and New York Red Bulls facilities. FIFA's budget also allowed clubs a daily contribution during the tournament of $38,500, to cover the cost of an average travelling party for their stays in five-star resorts, food, travel and associated costs. Chelsea ended up committing almost double FIFA's allowance during the tournament across all their costs in order to give their players the best possible preparation and prospects for success in the tournament. Chelsea arrived at the tournament in good spirits. The Premier League ended in positive fashion on May 25 as they sealed a Champions League place before the Conference League victory over Real Betis added some silverware to the season. Some players had a brief break and others headed away on international duty. Upon reconvening for four days of training at their Cobham training base in Surrey, Maresca told his players: 'Guys, it's not pre-season. It's a tournament — a big, big tournament.' Maresca took only a couple of days off, but said he could not be '100 per cent off' as he needed to get up to speed with teams he was less familiar with. On June 13, three days before their opening group stage game against LAFC, Chelsea flew to Philadelphia with 24 players, while South Americans Moises Caicedo, Enzo Fernandez, Andrey Santos and Aaron Anselmino met them stateside. Chelsea's approach to the tournament was emphasised by most of their players who had been loaned to other clubs having agreements in place which meant they could return to the club in time to feature in the Club World Cup. However, Chelsea saw the tournament as a continuation of the 2024-25 season and wanted to keep the group who had achieved their Premier League and Conference League targets by and large the same. Advertisement Santos, who shone at Strasbourg for the previous 18 months, was the exception because he has been earmarked to be part of the 2025-26 plans. The remaining loanees were allowed to go on holiday and returned to pre-season training at Cobham last week. Chelsea saw little benefit in having them out in U.S., making the squad size too large and therefore threatening to undermine the competitive nature of the sessions. Maresca sought to keep focus high but recognised his players needed adjustments. Ahead of the second group-stage game against Flamengo, he said: 'It's impossible for them as human beings to be fit or to be 100 per cent for 11 months. So this morning, we did the session and the main focus after the warm-up was just the tactical aspect.' Although their training base in Philadelphia enjoyed a breeze from the adjacent Delaware River, they deployed huge industrial fans by the side of the pitch and cooling sprays to mitigate the the scalding temperatures. Maresca also significantly shortened his sessions. Chelsea collapsed against Flamengo and several calls went wrong for Maresca, who started Delap ahead of Jackson. He also tweaked his system, opting to start Reece James in midfield, pushing his full-backs Malo Gusto and Marc Cucurella high instead of inverting them, and opting for Palmer, by then 26 games without a goal, to the right wing rather than as a No 10. Jackson emerged as a substitute but was sent off, while the team performed poorly even with 11 men. Jackson apologised in the dressing room, and to the fans on Instagram, and a photograph of a subdued birthday celebration later circulated on X. Cucurella said: 'He's a young player with a lot of quality but maybe needs to improve a little bit in these things. He has to learn. After the manager spoke, he said sorry, he didn't do it on purpose.' Maresca said he was trying 'something different' in his selection, with a view to next season, which highlighted how this tournament acted as a hybrid between pre-season experimentation and a competitive priority. This was highlighted, too, by Maresca using every outfield player at some point during the Club World Cup. By finishing second in the group stage, Chelsea actually gained an advantage as it placed them in the side of the draw that avoided PSG, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid. When Inter Milan and Manchester City unexpectedly exited in the round of 16, a clear path towards the final opened up. Yet Chelsea still needed to beat a Benfica side who had topped a group which included Bayern, while two Brazilian opponents awaited in the quarter-final and semi-final. Advertisement Chelsea have a far bigger budget but the Brazilian fans dominated the stadiums. Before the semi-final against Fluminense, Chelsea launched an initiative, asking their own players to promote tickets on Instagram to try and bring more blue into the MetLife stadium. Over 65,000 attended the match against Palmeiras in Philadelphia and over 70,000 turned out at MetLife, as tickets dropped to $11 for the quarter-final and $13 for the semi-final. There was a more significant contingent of Chelsea fans for the final against PSG, helped by a large swathe of Ecuadorean supporters backing Moises Caicedo, and their dismantling of the team who had been billed as the world's best will probably have earned them many more. The scenes at full-time, when PSG and Chelsea players had to be separated by staff as tensions boiled over, gave an indication as to how much this occasion meant and how the French champions had been rattled by Maresca's approach. Now, Chelsea players will finally have a three-week holiday, reporting back for training on August 4. Chelsea have not requested their domestic league push back their fixtures to give the team a greater rest. Chelsea's view is that their players will be rested, recuperated and ready to go all over again. They will play warm-up games for the new season against Bayer Leverkusen on August 8 and Milan on August 10. They will begin their Premier League season 35 days on from the final of the Club World Cup. And they will do so as champions of the world. Additional reporting: Simon Johnson and Liam Twomey
