Issue - meetings

The Licensing Officer stated that there was no additional information to add to that in the report which had been circulated and the supplementary statement from residents.

One of the local residents, who had submitted the application for review of the licence, stated that the procedure of reaching an application for a review to the Licensing Sub-Committee had been a painful one for the residents. They had endured noise for four and a half years, including building works at Serata Hall. She invited one of the former residents of Serata Hall, who owned an apartment at Serata Hall but who now lived elsewhere, to address the Sub-Committee as a witness.  The second resident stated that she had lived on the top floor of the building until September 2019.  During the summer, there had been unacceptable levels of noise in her living room and the mezzanine bedroom. The noise was particularly bad in the afternoons and at weekends. She had been able to see large tables and chairs outside Serata Hall and could hear noise from the premises, even if her windows were not open. The noise went on until after 9pm.  On one occasion, the premises staff had failed to put away the chairs and tables and anti-social behaviour had continued until 4am. She had moved away soon afterwards but planned to return in the future.

The first resident described the Noise Team’s suggestions for dealing with the noise and anti-social behaviour as a “step forward”.  The fault did not lie entirely with Serata Hall as the noise vibrated because of the design of the buildings in the immediate area. The flats below her own did not suffer from the noise problems, whereas she did. She said that the noise was worse than that from traffic and that there was unbelievable noise from Serata Hall.  She asked the Sub-Committee to imagine a constant conversation, with loud voices. She could not open her windows because of the noise.  She hoped that the outside seating area of the premises could be moved to the other side of The Bower, where it would be facing Old Street and where there were no residential buildings. This would become feasible once the improvement works around the Old Street Roundabout were completed. Until that time, she hoped that some measures could be introduced in the interim to deal with the noise. Some of the proposals would work, such as closing the seating area at 9pm.  Firstly, one of the suggestions had been that no more than 20 people be allowed in the outside seating area after 7pm, but residents suggested an amendment to that so that there was a restriction on the number of served customers to start at 6pm on Friday and Saturday and to include the bottomless brunch period.  Secondly, the residents requested a limit on the size of tables, as people seated at those tables generated noise, often shouting and screaming. Thirdly, on the matter of the barriers to contain customers outside Serata  ...  view the full minutes text for item 135