A well known pub in Norwich's Golden Triangle has closed its doors for the second time in three months.
The Bell Vue, in St Philips Road, had only just reopened under new management in the middle of December last year following the departure of the previous management and the closure of the pub in November.
However on Saturday the pub announced on its Facebook page it had shut its doors once more and the reason was due to maintenance issues.
Grahame MacDonald, who had taken over the pub on a temporary basis with his wife Victoria, explained the maintenance problems had made it very difficult to carry on trading.
'We took over the Belle Vue before Christmas in the short term,' said Mr MacDonald, who along with his wife runs a number of other popular Norfolk pubs including The Cellar House in Eaton, The Buck Inn in Thorpe St Andrew, and The White Lodge at Attleborough.
'We were asked to take on The Belle Vue on a temporary basis with a view potentially to taking it on permanently, but in the last few weeks there has been a significant number of maintenance-based issues which meant that we could not stay open. They are primarily around lack of heating, along with a lack of constant hot water and also there has been significant drainage issues. Given the [weather] forecast over the next week, on Thursday the decision to close was made.'
He added: 'It's a disappointing scenario given that we had just got the pub open again...but what we don't want to do is to compromise quality and standards, and we cannot maintain our standards with these maintenance issues.'
He said the decision to close was made collectively with the Ei Group, formerly Enterprise Inns, which owns the pub.
'They will now seek to resolve those issues and at some point in the future the pub will reopen,' Mr MacDonald said, adding at this stage it was not known who would run the pub in the future.
However, he said he believed there was a long-term commitment to keeping it open.
'The pub is an important part of the community...There is no intention to do anything else but reopen the Belle Vue as a pub,' he said.
The pub's Facebook page has been full of comments from people sad to hear the news of its current closure. Among them, Phillip Bazley posted, 'Very sad and at a time when it was really looking like picking up again,' and Mikey Blitzy Kane wrote, 'It's a lot of people's happy place with great people! needs to be sorted!!'
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