Moulton Pub, Club and Church Up for Community Asset Listing

Four buildings in Moulton, the village about three miles south of Northwich, have been nominated as assets of community value. Cheshire West and Chester Council received all four on Thursday 17 September and all four are listed on its planning register as awaiting decision.

The four are:

• the Travellers Rest, Whitlow Lane, CW9 8QN, reference 26/02958/ACV
• St Stephen’s Church, Church Street, CW9 8PA, reference 26/02959/ACV
• the Moulton Adventure Group, School Lane, CW9 8PD, reference 26/02960/ACV
• the Moulton Verdin Working Men’s Club, Church Street, CW9 8PA, reference 26/02961/ACV

The register does not name who nominated them. None of the four case files carries a contact or a document.

Why this is happening now

Moulton had seven assets on the register and lost all seven inside four months.

The council’s own register of assets of community value, published as at 14 August 2026, shows that Moulton Parish Council successfully listed seven village sites in a single batch in late 2020 and early 2021. A listing lasts up to five years. Every one of those seven expired between 21 December 2025 and 6 April 2026:

Three of those seven are in the new batch: the Adventure Group, the Travellers Rest and the Verdin club. Four are not. The village hall and green, the Royal British Legion and its bowling green, the Weaver Road play area and the village stores have no live listing and no pending nomination on the register.

The fourth new nomination is not a repeat. St Stephen’s Church on Church Street has not been listed before. What the parish council listed in 2021 was the village hall and green on Main Road, a different site. A nomination for Moulton Methodist Church on Main Road was rejected on 6 April 2021.

One Moulton listing does survive. The Lion Hotel, 74 Main Road, was listed on 22 February 2023 after a nomination by Moulton Parish Council, and runs to 22 February 2028.

What a listing actually does

Less than most people assume, and the council is clear about it.

If an asset is listed, the owner must tell the council when they intend to sell it or grant a lease of more than 25 years. That triggers a six-week moratorium. If an eligible community group says in that window that it wants to buy, a six-month full moratorium follows, to give the group time to raise money and prepare a bid.

After that, the owner can sell to whoever they like. The council spells this out on its assets of community value page: the framework “does not give community groups first refusal, but it does provide time to develop a proposal, secure funding and prepare a bid on the open market”.

Nominations can only come from eligible community organisations with a local connection. Parish councils qualify, as do charities, community interest companies, community benefit societies and unincorporated bodies with at least 21 members. Homes, their gardens and outbuildings cannot be listed at all.

The deadline

The council has eight weeks from receiving a nomination to decide it. That is not discretionary: it is set by regulation 7 of the Assets of Community Value (England) Regulations 2012, which says the responsible authority “must decide whether land nominated by a community nomination should be included in the list within eight weeks of receiving the nomination”.

Counting eight weeks from 17 September gives a decision date of Thursday 12 November 2026 for all four.

The council also has to notify the owner, any freeholder or leaseholder, any lawful occupier and the parish council that it is considering listing the land.

What it means for you

If you use any of the four, nothing changes today. A nomination is not a listing, and a listing is not protection from sale. None of the four is recorded on the register as being for sale, and we are not suggesting any of them is.

If you are in one of the groups behind the four, the date to watch is 12 November. If the council does not decide by then, it has missed a statutory deadline.

If your own village group is thinking about this, the practical lesson from Moulton is the five-year clock. Seven listings expired here within four months of each other, and four of them have not been renewed. The council’s register records both successful and unsuccessful nominations, so it is worth checking what your parish already has and when it runs out.

Cheshire West’s wider planning decisions are tracked on our Chester planning news page.

Sources

• Cheshire West and Chester planning register, applications 26/02958/ACV, 26/02959/ACV, 26/02960/ACV and 26/02961/ACV, all received 17 September 2026 and all awaiting decision
• Register of assets of community value, Cheshire West and Chester Council, as at 14 August 2026 (the seven expired Moulton listings, the rejected Methodist Church nomination and the Lion Hotel’s listing to 2028)
• Assets of community value, Cheshire West and Chester Council (who can nominate, what cannot be listed, the six-week and six-month moratoriums and the five-year term)
• Regulation 7, Assets of Community Value (England) Regulations 2012 (the eight-week decision period) and regulation 8 (who must be told)