THE owner of a Rimington pub that closed in October has said that the village could not sustain the business.

Steve Hodgson, who owns the Black Bull with Katherine Lachance, said the village wasn’t big enough to sustain a pub and not enough people came into the area.

Mr Hodgson confirmed that the pub was being offered to the community to buy before submitting an application to convert the building into a residential property.

A public meeting will be held at the Rimington Memorial Institute tomorrow at 7.30pm to discuss the future of the pub.

The pair took over the Rimington Lane pub in 2011 and turned it into a traditional French country inn. However, they closed the pub in summer 2012 for six months before it reopened under new management.

Mr Hodgson said: “The problem was its location because the village is too small and not enough people come into it to make the business work.

“The business rates were too high and at the end we were paying more than £1,000 a month to the borough council. We tried everything but there’s nothing more that we can do.”