There may be local objections to the owner closing it down and just selling it

Do local objections carry any legal weight? I mean, does it actually require planning permission for the owners to close a pub and use it as a house, or sell it as a house? I'm thinking of a couple of pubs I know where that's happened, and I don't seem to remember any planning permission notices stuck up outside, nor any adverts in the local paper inviting people to say if they had objections to the change.