Walls Come Tumbling Down

This was the Sawyers Arms in Kendal. Nowt special as a pub and I only went there a few times. After it closed, it was put up for sale in 2016, with planning permission to convert it into luxury apartments. After the site was acquired by a London based property company, an announcement was made in 2021 that work would commence “soon” and the apartments would be ready to move into by autumn 2022. One of the conditions of planning was that as much of the original building as possible would be retained and it was listed accordingly.
But, apart from some hoardings going up, no obvious work took place. Nothing to say the company went bust - various reports mention receivers, but others claim they just lost interest. The council were monitoring the state of the building and yesterday an announcement was made that the road would be closed in the middle of the night and the building would be demolished “for safety reasons”. From a video I’ve seen online, it didn’t need much attention from the crane to reduce it to what you see in the picture.
So, what next? The cynic in me can’t help but think that it will be a lot easier to develop the site now that the listing issue has “disappeared”. And the fact that there are several companies listed as active that have a very similar name to the one that may - or may not - have gone bust, only makes me wonder if this has been a deliberate ploy to get around an awkward planning restriction and get the council tax payers to pick up the bill for the demolition.
I await developments (no pun intended) with interest…