Can transforming closed pubs into homes offer a solution to the housing crisis? 

The new landlord at the Queens Arms is The Brick, a local anti-poverty charity supported by Big Issue Invest. The homelessness charity’s CEO Keely Dalfen is showing us around. 

Rather than a round of beers and packets of pork scratchings, they are serving up 14 beds to act as supported temporary accommodation for men experiencing homelessness. 

Walking around the pub, it’s unrecognisable. You can barely see where the bar would have been. 

Rather than tables, chairs and a fruit machine, there’s an office and a security room, which is staffed 24/7, downstairs. 

There are rooms opposite for appointments – intensive support is part of the service and each resident gets a two-hour weekly session to help them overcome whatever issues they have. 

Dalfen wants them to avoid becoming a revolving door of professionals. 

“I’m quite keen that this is people’s homes, right? We wouldn’t have a doctor come over,” she tells Big Issue, adding that the charity’s Brickworks day centre is still used for some appointments. 

There’s a communal living room with a TV and an Xbox and a kitchen with a cook who does breakfast and tea. Dinner is self-catered with refrigerated space for residents to store food. 

Out the back, the beer garden has become a seating area for residents to relax. 

Upstairs are a series of dormitories with beds and a small space to store belongings while there are plenty of bathrooms: seven to be exact. Dalfen explains that part of the planning process saw more added to avoid arguments. 

Read more:

• ‘Nobody should feel on their own’: How pubs are stepping up to tackle the UK’s loneliness epidemic
• ‘It’s not like a normal pub’: How communities are rallying together to breathe new life into dying pubs
• Why we need to change the narrative for social housing

The impact 

If there are concerns that housing people who have experienced addiction in a pub could be triggering, that hasn’t been the case since the facility opened in April. One resident has made so much progress with abstinence from alcohol and is so ready to move on, he’s already buying belongings for his next home. 

“He’s writing his letter to the alcohol that he’s been demoned with,” says Dalfen in relation to the alcohol addiction course the resident is taking. 

“He read it to me – well some of it – the other day. I started crying, I’m like: ‘Oh my god.’ 

“It’s so emotional, you know. It’s really rewarding seeing them grow from when they very first come in.” 

Another resident is preparing to move out of the building the day after Big Issue visits. He’s excited. 

The Queens Arms opened its doors in April. Previously, The Brick supported people experiencing homelessness at its Brickworks day centre. Meanwhile, accommodation could see as many as 20 people packed into the Queen’s Hall night shelter, rising to 28 during times of extreme weather. 

There were plenty of challenges, Lauren Westwell, The Brick’s independent living mentor, tells Big Issue. 

“When we were at the old provision it was quite difficult to manage because they didn’t have that stable accommodation,” she says. 

“They were not able to build a routine and obviously there were people who weren’t in the shelter who were coming for support as well.  

“It can sometimes just turn into a bit of bedlam because obviously there a lot of people in the same room, it can cause tension sometimes.” 

Giving people their own space rather than being packed into a shelter has already shown results, Westwell says. 

Some residents have even been able to reconnect with their families after finding more stability in their lives. 

“You’ve actually seen people make a routine of themselves and they’re getting up at a good time, they’re going out, they’re making their own appointments, they’re going to their appointments, they’re engaging with everything that they need to do,” adds Westwell. 

“When you’ve gone from a night shelter of beds just split around and there’s no privacy and there’s one toilet and you can’t sleep because people are snoring or people are shouting and arguing, 

“They’ve took pride in this here and you can see it in their faces as well. They are not being forgotten about, they’re not just being shoved into a bottom of a basement because it’s like, we’ve got nowhere else to put you yet, you should be grateful, you’ve got somewhere warm to stay.” 

A long road 

It took almost two years for The Brick to transform the Queens Arms from derelict pub into emergency accommodation. 

That was down to a tortuous time through the planning system and social media hysteria over houses of multiple occupancy (HMOs). 

If the Queens Arms is a showcase of how to do accommodation differently for people experiencing homelessness, it’s also a clear example of the kind of barriers similar projects may face. 

Dalfen first saw the potential in the Queens Arms in the summer of 2024 but a planning application was knocked back in July last year. 

It was rejected over the proposed layout as well as a number of objections from supported accommodation for over-55s across the road called Saddle Court. 

Meanwhile, the political climate meant that the idea of an HMO proved unpopular. 

The rise of Reform UK – the party took 24 out of 25 contested seats at Wigan Borough Council in May’s local elections – “spooked” councillors, Dalfen says. The depth of feeling meant the council took the decision to remove permitted development rights which allowed homes to be changed into HMOs without planning permission in July last year. 

“When it went to the first planning committee, because there’s this real division in society at the moment, everybody was like, you can just imagine, it’s going to be full of boat people, all that horrendous stuff,” she says. 

“We were really despondent and thought, “god, what are we going to do next?” 

The Brick’s response was a campaign called Love Wins. They reached out to the residents of Saddle Court who were able to meet staff and their new neighbours to ease concerns, bust a few misconceptions and build some bridges. 

The charity also launched Mythbuster Mondays: using social media to explain that their efforts to end homelessness are based around compassion and dignity. 

They distributed Love Wins T-shirts. Dalfen also did the one thing you need to do to win hearts and minds in Wigan: get Wigan Warriors players involved. 

“We didn’t talk about that accommodation or the planning or anything, but what we tried to do was try to get people to understand what homelessness is and what we were trying to do,” she says. 

“We were bringing the community together and it was really successful and loads of people got behind it.” 

Next steps 

The Queens Arms may offer some inspiration to other places where pubs have closed their doors.

However, Labour’s new planning reforms have promised to make it harder to turn former pubs into homes.

Under the new reforms in England, housebuilders will need to show that a closed pub has been up for sale for at least a year and there is no prospect of it reopening before they can change the use through the planning system.

Transport secretary Heidi Alexander said: “Pubs and music venues are the lifeblood of communities, local jobs and high streets – and the changes we are making will protect them from being lost without good reason.”

If former boozers are renovated to a high standard, they will not replace the need for thousands of purpose-built social homes. 

But with Andy Burnham’s pledge to offer rough sleepers a route off the streets before Christmas means there is a need for accommodation for people currently experiencing homelessness.

In Wigan, at least, The Brick’s new facility is making a difference. 

When the residents of Saddle Court came round to the Queens Arms to meet residents in March, the collision of worlds demonstrated the power of community. 

And that perhaps the stigma around homelessness can be overcome. 

“Some of the residents from the supported accommodation used to drink here when they were younger, so they were like, ‘I think I played darts here’,” says Dalfen. 

“I think they were also looking back to those times and thinking, they missed that. “And we were like saying: ‘Now we’ve got community space again, it’s just a bit different.’” 

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