Agenda and minutes

Members are asked to declare any disclosable pecuniary or affected interests in respect of any matter to be considered at this meeting.

Any Member with a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest in a matter should withdraw from the meeting when the matter is under consideration and should notify the Democratic Services Officer in attendance that they are withdrawing as they have such an interest. If the Disclosable Pecuniary Interest is not entered on the register of Members interests the Monitoring Officer must be notified of the interest within 28 days.

Any Member with an affected Interest in a matter must disclose the interest to the meeting and must not participate in discussion of the matter or vote on the matter unless granted a dispensation by the Monitoring officer or by the Governance and Audit Committee.  There is no requirement to withdraw from the meeting when the interest is only an affected interest, but the Monitoring Officer should be notified of the interest, if not previously notified of it, within 28 days of the meeting.

There were no declarations of interest.

The procedure for hearings at Licensing Panels was noted.

The Panel carefully considered all the information presented, both written and oral, from:

• the Licensing Officer who outlined the issues;
• the Applicant,
• the Interested Parties;

together with reference to the appropriate Licensing objectives, the Council’s own Licensing Policy and the Secretary of State’s guidance. The panel particularly considered the sections of the policy that the applicant referred the panel to in his submissions. At the conclusion of the proceedings, all participants present confirmed that they had been given the opportunity to say all they wished to say. It was acknowledged at the commencement of the panel hearing that everyone present had all the relevant documentation before them and had an opportunity to read the material. During the panel, reference was made to the plan and where the interested parties’ houses were in relation to the premises.

The Panel noted that there had been no representations made by the Police, or any of the other Responsible Authorities. The Panel bore in mind the promotion of the four licensing objectives, the relevant objectives in this case being existing noise and public nuisance.

The Panel decided that granting the licence would have an adverse impact on the promotion of the licensing objective of preventing public nuisance and particularly noise nuisance. The panel determined that the licence for the supply of alcohol 24 hours a day, seven days a week should not be granted.

The Panel agreed that the licence to sell Late Night Refreshment restricted to hot drinks only should be granted, as it was understood that the purchase of hot drinks would be an adjunct to the purchase of petrol, rather than the standalone purchase of alcohol. The Panel agreed with the suggestion made on the application form that this licence should be for drinks only.

Reasons

The Panel heard the account of residents and objectors, and were absolutely convinced that there was an existing, current and ongoing noise nuisance caused by the premises’ 24 hour opening times which had been exercised for the previous two months. The panel assessed the demeanour of the presentation of those making representations  both for the applicant and the interested parties (objectors) and believed that both parties were honest, gave accurate evidence and their evidence was cogent.

They believed that the representative for the garage would go back and try and introduce some changes to working practices that will be designed to reduce the level of noise nuisance. However, the panel believed that the operating model at the garage at night with lone worker cashiers using a tannoy to communicate with customers would be difficult to reduce noise nuisance because of the requirements associated with the sale of petroleum. The panel determined, on the balance of probabilities as a matter of fact, that the garage operations at night time are currently posing a noise nuisance to residents in the vicinity of the licensed premises. The panel concluded that the noise was in part attributable to the operation of the garage as vendors of petroleum which  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.