The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) has named the winners of its Pub Saving and Heritage awards.
The Hull Community Pub Society, who saved the New Clarence, in Hull, have won the Pub Saving Award. Runners-up were Ashton Hayes Community Hub Ltd, who rescued the Golden Lion, in Ashton Hayes, Chester, and the George Community Pub (Wickham Market) Ltd who campaigned for the George, in Wickham Market, Suffolk.
The Vine, in Pittshill, Stoke-on-Trent, has won the Heritage award, with the Crown Inn, Stockport, runner-up.
The Pub Saving Awards celebrate communities who have rallied together to fight for their local, saving the pub from a grim fate of conversion or even demolition. The awards put these campaigns in the spotlight, inspiring others to investigate community ownership for their local.
The New Clarence is Hull’s first community-owned pub and the first city pub to win the award. The high land value of high streets and city centres makes pubs an enticing target for greedy developers, and, as a result, much harder for campaigners to save than their rural counterparts. The judges were incredibly impressed with the group’s achievement.
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After closing in 2023, developers submitted a planning application to convert the New Clarence to a house of multiple occupation. The Hull Community Pub Society was formed, fighting off the applications and subsequent appeals. They then raised almost £250,000, also gaining £300,000 backing from the now discontinued Community Ownership Fund, to buy the pub in February 2025. The New Clarence reopened its doors to its community in September.
The Heritage award is open to all pubs on CAMRA’s National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors. To promote and preserve the interiors of historic pubs, the award highlights people who have saved or who have carefully revived a heritage pub.
This year’s winner is the Vine, a back-street Victorian local which had closed during the Coronavirus pandemic. The grade II pub has an interior of outstanding national historic importance and was bought at auction by Steve Burke and his partner Lisa Combes, who have restored it to its former glory. Renovations have been made to the roof, basement and a small beer yard, but the layout of the historic pub has been preserved.
