A bakery is set to open on the site of a former well-known pub north of York.

Coopland & Son (Scarborough) Ltd can now extend an existing café building at the back of the former Four Alls on Malton Road at Stockton-on-the-Forest.

The development by the A64 would add to the conversion of the empty pub into a café, believed to be a Starbucks.

The bakery chain seeks to open the store on a 0.42ha green belt site, which was previously a garage used by the long-closed pub.

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There would also be four tables with four chairs outside.

As previously reported, the planned Starbucks would create 25 jobs and the Cooplands a similar number.

A report by City of York Planning staff says the pub conversion has already been approved for its use as a café with drive-thru and offices at first floor level.

The extension of the café building would provide a washing and storage area for Cooplands.

The site is in the green belt and when plans were submitted in August, just one letter of objection was received, from the occupier of Sawmill House, Hutton.

They said: “It is an extremely dangerous stretch of road that also suffers from congestion; it does not need another food outlet that will contribute to members of the public in the future being injured or suffer from a fatality as a result.”

Assessing the scheme, council planners said the extension needed by Cooplands was not disproportionate to the existing building, so it would have no openness on the openness of the Green Belt.

There were homes 100m to the west but the opening hours proposed for both the Cooplands and the Starbucks were similar to the former pub, with 6am to 11pm being “reasonable.”

Their report concluded the building extension was not disproportionate and while the hardstanding to serve it would impact on the Green belt, the extension “is modest in nature and would not result in visual harm, nor have a detrimental upon neighbouring residential amenity, subject to a condition relating to opening hours.

“Further, the would be no adverse impacts upon non designated heritage assets, biodiversity or flooding and drainage. Whilst an objection has been received, the issues raised and the principle of the use of the unit and its access have already been established,” the planning officers also concluded.

The approval for the building extension for Cooplands comes as City of York Council is still determining a planning application for signage, plans which were submitted in August.

Though Starbucks declined to comment on its plans for the site when contacted by the Press recently, both developments appear to conclude a long-running saga concerning the site, when plans were first submitted in 2019 to demolish the long-empty pub and build two 5-bed homes on the site.