The hearing for the licence application for Par Vinu, the proposed wine bar under Phelps, is due to take place this Tuesday, 10 October at 7.00 in York House. There have been 88 letters of objection. To put this in context when the law was changed and the Ailsa Tavern applied for extended opening hours the council received 71 letters of objection. The extra hours were not granted. The Turks Head received 52 objections when they applied for extended hours and the St Margarets Tavern 56 objections.
Opening Hours applied for are:
- Mon-Thur 10:30-23:30
- Fri-Sat 10:30-00.00 Sun 11:00-23:30
- 01:00 on Christmas Eve, and on Bank Holiday Sundays
- 02:00 on New Year’s Eve.
Links
Comments
Just to let everyone know that the Licensing committee did give Parvinu their licence this evening.
They would only accept objections from people within 150 metres of the venue - but the applicants will have to do a leaflet drop (presumably again within 150 metres of the venue) and provide a telephone number to this website - in order to give residents a contact number to ring in the case of any problems. Also they must not allow coaches to park within 200 metres of the entrance.
The application still has one more hurdle to jump before any work can commence, that's another full planning meeting to assess their latest travel and air-conditioning plans.
Here's the link if you want to look at them and then make any comments to the council's planning department. All comments must be submitted by the 25th of October
http://www.ukplanning.com/richmond/showCaseFile.do;jsessionid=2608D20B79F9584B0E7ACB8583543BEF.wam2?action=show&appType=planning%20folder&appNumber=05/2442/DD02
Harry Jacobs on 2006-10-10 21:54:42 +0000The astonishing thing about this hearing was that the outcome had clearly been decided before the meeting even commenced. At least that is how it seemed. 66 letters of objection were dismissed at the outset as they came from people beyond a seemingly arbirtrarily imposed 150 metre limit. No mention was made of this limit at any point in any of the litereature neighbours received about the licence process prior to the hearing. One letter of objection was dismissed because it was from someone who although resident within the 150 metre exclusion zone, happens to have been working abroad for a couple of months. The fact that he has been a resident for many years and that his family is still living and working here and that he will be back in a few weeks did not seem to matter. But in fact none of the objections raised mattered.
Objectors would have been required to prove that the bar would cause public nuisance, safety issues, danger to children or crime and disorder. But how can you prove any of these things for an establishment that does not actually exist yet?
Common sense tells us that such a bar serving 180 people a night is very likely to increase all of these things. But unless you can prove it, forget it, and how can you prove something will happen in the future? It is a totally circular argument.
As I say the case was decided before the meeting started. Nothing any objector said could have made a difference.
Our local councillors spoke against the granting of the licence, on the grounds of public nuisance. That also made absolutely no difference whatsoever.
The committee did not impose any kind of restrictions on numbers of drinkers.
The whole process seemed to me to be utterly empty and meaningless. A charade that we all went through in the name of local democracy.
Louise on 2006-10-11 13:24:43 +0000If the matter was decided before the meeting then there are grounds for challenging the decision by way of judicial review. A group of local residents affected by the decision would have locus to challenge it. An application for judicial review has to be made as soon as reasonably practicable and in any event within 3 months of the decision challenged.
Fiona Laurence on 2006-10-12 13:19:59 +0000I suspect that proving that the matter was decided before the meeting would be next-to-impossible and a judicial review would be an extremely expensive way of pursuing a fruitless course. Once the Planning Committee had granted change-of-use, the chances of the Licensing Committee refusing a licence were very small, although the (apparant - we haven't seen the minutes) lack of conditions is a concern.
We now need to focus on the realistic objective of modifying the applicants' travel plan, which currently allows for customer minibus parking until late in the Mews as their way of getting around the coach ban. This is opposable and defeatable; I have already put a submission on the Planning Site (follow the link above) which others may care to use as a pattern.
David Bertram, 28 Broadway Ave.
David bertram on 2006-10-12 16:33:46 +0000