A pub where a man was killed nine years ago could be demolished and turned into flats.

In 2009, horrified drinkers and families looked on as David John Stevenson was murdered when two men armed with machetes slashed him to death at the New Inn on Myrtle Road.

Now a planning application has been submitted that would see the "redundant" New Inn make way for two sets of three bedroom houses.

In a letter to Sutton Council, the company behind the application - Dunthorne Parker Architects - said the pub no longer served a purpose to the community.

"Being a public house with residential accommodation over, we write to explain that we have concluded, after studies of the existing form of the

building and the potential for the site, that it’s retention is not viable from either a commercial or a planning perspective," the letter said.

"With a larger, more prominent, public house only 100 metres away the trade at this pub has suffered and declined over recent years and that, along with issues of access, security and noise after hours, have led to it’s closure.

"Subsequent marketing has failed to find a buyer for its original use so it has now been sold for residential purposes."

The company said it was necessary to knock the building down as it wasn't suited to housing as it currently stands.

"Given that the building was built specifically as a public house it’s layout is not conducive to division and conversion into separate units, and its original construction makes it unsustainable in structural, thermal, and acoustic terms," the letter said.

"For these reasons the scheme that has evolved seeks to replicate the form of family housing that is found along the length of Myrtle Road and, more generally, in the Newtown area at large."