Two late night licences cut back Posted:16/02/2010 15:01:49
In October last year Domino Pizzas, on Hills Road close to the top of Glisson Road, applied to open until 5am. In our view there is little doubt that many patrons leaving the late opening city centre pubs and clubs would have been attracted to it. Eating in the streets adds to our discarded rubbish problem.
As a neighbourhood, we experience a huge amount of late night vandalism and mess. Clearly, this is not the fault of take-away shops, but if more people use our streets as a through route to Mill Road, the Station and the Devonshire Road Cycle Bridge then it is likely that we will see an increase in a drunken minority’s mindless vandalism.
More disruption was likely from delivery of pizzas in the early hours of the morning. Many residents will remember the constant stream of noisy mopeds using Glisson and Lyndewode Roads. In recent times, the company began using cars for delivery but with no guarantee this would continue.
Domino Pizza’s existing permission allowed it to open until midnight during the week and 1am at weekends. They applied to extend hours to 5am every night. Getting the front shop for sales closed at 1am and deliveries only until 5am, with an absolute prohibition on the use of mopeds, seemed a reasonable compromise, which took into account the needs of this business and their customers, and the proximity of our residential neighbourhood.
A more recent application for late night off licence was also opposed by the Association, local residents and the police. JSG wines proposed to convert the Internet Café opposite St Pauls Church into an off licence selling alcohol until 1am.The Council Licensing Committee met in January and, despite objections, decided to grant the application, but imposed a closing time of 11pm. This is not an entirely satisfactory result as we will now have four off-licences in a short stretch of Hills Road. We understand the Wine Rack premises (for which we managed to restrict opening times to 10am to 10pm last year) will reopen as an off-licence under new management. We are trying to negotiate making this part of Hills Road into a Cumulative Impact zone, restricting further applications for off-licences in the area.
