PLANNERS have ordered the owner of a rundown pub to smarten up its appearance after complaints about its “dilipidated” condition at the gateway to a Wye Valley town.

The Riverside Inn in Ross-on-Wye is the first building visitors see on Wye Street when they enter the town via Wilton Bridge.

But empty for years and boarded up, it has fallen into disrepair with no sign of any new plans for the building since an application to part-convert it into housing was refused at the end of 2016.

Now Herefordshire Council has issued an enforcement notice to improve its appearance, alongside an order for the Domino’s Pizza takeaway in the town’s Gloucester Road to improve its frontage as well.

Pub owner Mark Dew, who also owns the Malt Shovel pub in Ruardean, won an appeal against a council enforcement notice over his Doward Farm collection of vintage and rusting cars last year.

But the council has now issued an order for the Riverside Inn and its perimeter beside the Caroline Symonds Gardens to be improved.

The move follows a complaint to Ross-on-Wye town council by resident Joyce Thomas who said the “eyesore” building was in “an appalling condition” and had been “vandalised”.

Enforcement action has previously been taken to get rubbish removed from outside the premises, the town council says.

Mr Dew submitted a plan in 2015 to convert the building into four residential units, which brought strong opposition form the likes of the Campaign for Real Ale and the town council, who wanted to see it reopened as a pub.

The applicant claimed the pub was “no longer viable,”and cited the conversion of three other local pubs - The Plough Inn, The Stag and The Vine Tree Inn – as a precedent.

Herefordshire CAMRA said they had spoken to a previous licensee who had “made a good living there” despite it being “under invested.”

In April 2016 the plan was withdrawn and resubmitted, this time to part-change the premises into a two-bed home and two three-bed dwellings and reopen the pub.

But planners rejected the scheme in November 2016, saying the pub was a long-standing community facility and there had been no attempt to market it as a going concern.

There were also concerns about providing more residential accommodation in a floodzone.