Fox Inn Newfound Listed as Community Asset After Closing

The Fox Inn at Newfound, which shut its doors in the summer, has been added to Basingstoke and Deane’s list of assets of community value. If the pub is put up for sale, local people can now trigger a six-month pause to put together a bid of their own.

Newfound is a hamlet on the B3400 Andover Road, about three miles west of Basingstoke town centre, in Oakley and Deane parish.

The listing is recorded in an officer decision dated 9 September and published on the council’s website on 22 October. The pub was nominated by Oakley and Deane Parish Council, whose nomination reached the council on 22 July 2026.

Why the council agreed

The decision report says the nomination met each legal test. It records that the property “is currently permanently closed and there is no current occupier”.

The council accepted two arguments about the pub’s value:

• that “there was a time in the recent past” when it was “well used by the local community and attracted visitors from further afield”, offering “a wide range of opportunities for social interaction and community engagement”
• that it is realistic to think it could again serve the social wellbeing or social interests of the community within the next five years

The report also confirms that the freehold owner was told about the nomination, as the regulations require.

When it closed

The council’s papers do not say when the pub stopped trading. CAMRA’s national pub database records the Fox as closed from 6 June 2026 and “closed long term” from 6 July, with the note “Closed, being marketed”. CAMRA lists the freehold owner as Fuller, Smith & Turner.

A search of the council’s planning register on 26 October found no application to change the pub’s use. The most recent application on the site, 18/02043/FUL, was granted in October 2018 for a single-storey extension, a kitchen extract and a larger garden dining terrace.

What the listing does, and does not do

The council’s Community Right to Bid page and the decision report set out how it works:

• if the owner decides to sell, they must tell the council, which publishes the notice
• nothing can be sold for six weeks from that notice
• if a community group asks in writing within those six weeks to be treated as a bidder, the sale is paused for six months from the notice, to give it time to raise the money
• after that the owner can sell to anyone, and the report is clear that “no preference is given to the local community bid”

The listing does not oblige the owner to sell, does not set a price, and does not stop the pub being let to a new tenant. An owner can also claim compensation for losses caused by the listing. Under the 2012 regulations, an entry stays on the list for five years.

Nine pubs on the list

The council’s register of listed assets, updated in October 2026, now has 18 entries. Nine are pubs, almost all nominated by parish councils:

There are two Fox Inns on the list. The other is on Popham Lane in North Waltham, about six miles south-west of town, and was listed in October 2025.

What it means for you

If you live in Oakley, Newfound or Deane and want the Fox back as a pub, the listing gives you time, not money. The useful step now is organisational. Only a properly constituted community group, such as a community interest company, a charity or a parish council, can register to bid. Six months from a sale notice is not long to raise the price of a freehold pub, so a group formed in advance starts with an advantage.

Watch the council’s Community Right to Bid page, where any notice of an intended sale is published. Questions go to the council’s community asset team at communityassets@basingstoke.gov.uk.

For other planning decisions around the borough, see our Basingstoke planning news page.