A boutique hotel has been ordered to remove an outdoor bar it put up to allow outside dining during Covid.

The Double Red Duke in Clanfield is a 17th century coaching inn which was given a stylish makeover to turn it into a luxury country hotel in 2020.

Retrospective permission for the bar was refused by West Oxfordshire District Council in June 2022.

The hotel appealed but lost and the council has now said the bar must be taken down by the end of October.

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The planning inspector found that the bar harmed the setting of the Grade II-listed building which, he said, can be seen from all neighbouring streets as well as the northern end of the green.

Although the bar was built in silvered oak to blend in he found that due to the non-vernacular materials and its scale and siting the bar was "a particularly prominent feature, which dilutes the experience of the approach and surroundings of the listed building and detracts from its main facade".

Hotelier Georgina Pearman had argued that post Covid, customers' habits have changed and they prefer to dine outdoors and the bar was a useful distribution point for food and service and improved supervision of work.

The planning inspector said this was largely dependent on the weather and there was "limited evidence"  that there has been a shift towards drinking and dining outdoors.

Oxford Mail: Double Red Duke

"Indeed, there are public houses and hotels that operate post-Covid without any outdoor drinking and dining facilities," he wrote.

He added that staff serving the outdoor area could also take orders and he was not persuaded by her argument that people did not want to go into the hotel in case they disturbed other guests.

He said in any case customers using the outdoor area are likely to use the indoor facilities such as toilets.

While some financial information about the business has been provided, "it is unclear from this how the bar has been a significant benefit for the business.

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"Therefore, it has not been proven that the bar is necessary for securing the optimum viable use of the hotel," he said.

The inspector concluded that he did not consider the suggested benefits "to be sufficiently forceful to outweigh the less than substantial harm that I have identified and the great weight that must be given to the conservation of heritage assets".