Over One Hundred Attend Demo to Save Grove Park Pub
Residents trying to prevent Station House conversion into flats
Residents gathered outside the pub site this Saturday to protest against the plans
October 18, 2026
More than 100 people gathered outside the Old Station House in Grove Park on Saturday afternoon (17 October) to oppose plans to convert the pub into flats. The turnout came as a petition against the scheme passed 400 signatures.
The crowd, which gathered in the piazza outside the pub, included local residents, members of the Grove Park Group and Conservative councillors and volunteers.
Campaigners have already registered their first success by persuading Hounslow Council to extend the consultation on the planning application until 6 November. It had been due to close on Monday 19 October.
The application (P/2026/2100) was submitted on behalf of Associate Properties. It seeks a change of use for the vacant ground and lower ground floors of the building on Grove Park Road, near Chiswick railway station, to create three residential units.
The pub has been empty since Punch Taverns left in March 2023. The application follows a marketing campaign described in a May 2026 report by property agents Jenkins Law, which said more than two years of efforts failed to produce an offer from a prospective tenant. The asking rent fell from £100,000 a year to £80,000, then £70,000 and finally £60,000.
The agents also said they had explored other commercial and community uses, including contacting 39 local nurseries in October 2025, without success. Nine site inspections produced no offers. The report blamed limited footfall, the size and layout of the premises, rising operating costs and changing consumer habits, and concluded the site was unlikely to be let again as a pub. It pointed to other former Chiswick pubs, including the Mawson Arms and the Duke of York on Devonshire Road, that have won permission for residential conversion.
Permission for the change of use depends on the planning committee being convinced a pub is unviable at the site.
The building began life as the Grove Park Hotel and has been a pub, with a few short breaks, for many years. It was renamed the Old Station House in 2008. Punch took it over in December 2020 and reopened it in July 2022 after much of the Covid lockdown period. When the closure was announced in 2023, Punch said it had not been told what the owner intended and that the freeholder had served notice without offering a lease extension.
In 2021 the council approved application P/2020/3154, which allowed a second-floor side and roof extension and a basement, creating four flats. A condition on that consent restricted the ground floor to pub use. A later proposal (P/2022/2425) sought to convert the ground-floor pub to residential use and build six flats with extensions and a new two-storey element. The council's planning committee refused it in November 2022.
At the time, Tom Bruce, then Cabinet Member for Regeneration and Development, said the developer would need to show either that pub use was being provided elsewhere locally or that a robust marketing campaign to retain a pub had failed.
Campaigners also note that the 2023 closure coincided with a council consultation on a piazza in front of the pub, a scheme meant partly to encourage commercial activity, in which the building featured prominently in the council's visualisations.
The petition against the loss of the pub was launched by Chiswick's Conservative councillors. It calls on the council to refuse the application and to protect the pub as an Asset of Community Value. It points to the previous refusal of almost exactly the same plan and says the owner should not be rewarded for first reducing the size of the pub and then shutting it.
Over 400 people have signed the petition so far, which campaigners say, undermines the claim that there is no demand for pub at this site.
A report submitted with the application said that the pub site had been advertised to let for over two years
Cllr Gabriella Giles, who represents Chiswick Riverside, said many neighbours had stories of the pub hosting christenings and wakes, and that one young attendee had done her best-ever homework there. "The importance and value of a public space such as the Old Station House cannot be overstated," she said, welcoming the extension and urging supporters to sign and object before 6 November.
Chiswick Homefields councillor Cllr Linden Grigg said Grove Park "wants to keep its pub" and that Saturday's turnout made that undeniable. He said he looked forward to presenting the petition to Hounslow Council.
The petition is also supported by Cllrs Jack Emsley and Michael Denniss. All the Conservative councillors for Chiswick Homefields and Chiswick Riverside are members of the Grove Park Group and are working with it.
In an email to supporters ahead of the event, the Grove Park Group said the pub has had 156 years of continual community use and would be "permanently lost" if the application is approved. It is also preparing a bid to have the pub listed as an Asset of Community Value, which it says would raise the hurdles to conversion, and is asking residents for photos and stories of community events at the pub as evidence. It says every adult in a household can submit an objection.
The freehold is believed to be held by a Birmingham-based company called Associate Properties, though the address on the application is in Wimbledon. We have not been able to make contact with the applicant.
To make comments on the proposal visit the planning section of the Hounslow Council web site and search using reference P/2026/2100.
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