A PROPOSAL to build 32 new homes in the place of a Poole pub has been submitted to the council.

The application is for outline planning permission for five houses and 27 flats on the site of The Oakdale at Canford Heath.

The exact design and layout have yet to be specified, but initial drawings for the 1.2 acre site show five semi-detached homes with gardens to the rear of the site and three apartment blocks to the front section, nearest the Dorset Way.

Applicants Enterprise Inns have already carried out preliminary consultations with some 150 residents, sparking concerns about increased congestion and overdevelopment of the site.

The pub, which sits alongside the Dorset Way but only has access via Kingsmill Way, has had seven tenants in five years, and has seen a dramatic decrease in customer numbers. It has already ceased trading, and has been marketed with Savills, including for community uses, for the past five months.

Canford Heath East Ward Councillor Sandra Moore objected to "the loss of a community facility" and said there was no evidence that alternative community uses, for example a care home or doctors' surgery, "had been actively considered."

She added: "There is significant local concern about further traffic being generated by the proposed development in this highly congested area."

Adrian Merrifield, 48, from Oakdale, said: "It was a very good pub. If there is one thing I’m going to miss about it, it would be the character of the building. That’s going to be a loss. Also the atmosphere inside the pub, it had a very local feel to it. It wasn’t profitable because it kept opening and closing, but I think it’s a bad move to get rid of it.”

A resident of nearby Cribb Close, who did not give his name, added: "We’ve made our protests. When the second carriageway [on the Dorset Way] was built it killed the access to the pub and over time it got scruffier and scruffier. People didn’t visit it when it was in that state.”

According to the developers there has been "no viable solutions for its reuse within the existing use class." The planning papers state that a residential development "presents the opportunity to make an efficient use of the land in this edge-of-settlement location."