A ONCE-thriving community pub is to be reborn as a supermarket a year after last orders were called for the final time.

The Trafalgar Hotel, in Railway Street, Nelson, closed in August 2009, after Punch Taverns sold it to developers.

The sale went through despite an eleventh-hour bid by three of the pub’s most loyal customers to buy it and keep it as a local boozer.

Steve Burke, one of the regulars who campaigned to save the pub, said it had declined into a ‘ramshackle’ state over the last year.

But he welcomed the new work, saying any development would be an improvement.

He said: “It’s a year since it closed and they have let it run down into a ramshackle state.

"The windows are boarded-up and broken and all they have done is build a four or five-foot wall around the perimeter.

“I suppose anything will be better than what is there now.”

In the past two years, time has been called at two other Nelson pubs, the Hour Glass and the Clayton Arms.

Mr Burke, of Vaughan Street, said: “A year has gone by since it closed and there’s nothing anybody can do.

"It’s just a shame so many pubs have closed down in Nelson.”

Builders have started carrying out alterations at the former Trafalgar site.

Council chiefs said developers were not required to submit a planning application as the building had permission to be used for retail.

Kieran Howarth, Pendle development control manager, said: “If it’s what’s called A1 Retail, such as a supermarket or other sort of shop, it wouldn’t need planning permission for change of use.

“A building regulations application has been received for alterations to the building.”