Transcript
Hi, good evening. Thank you for coming. So, welcome to the Licensing Subcommittee meeting. My name is Councillor Meena Ali, and I'm the Chair of the Licensing Subcommittee. This meeting is being held in person. Committee members and key participants are present in the meeting room, and there may be some joining remotely online.
Filming the meeting. The meeting is being filmed for the Council's website for public viewing. I will remind members at the meeting to only speak on my direction, and to speak clearly into their microphones, to ensure their contributions can be properly recorded. Can members and officers please introduce themselves?
I'll start with you.
Simi Azman, Democratic Services.
Jonathan Melnick, Legal Services.
Councillor Mohamed Belal, President of Black and QB Town Ward. Thank you.
Councillor Abdi Mohamed.
Thank you, members.
Simi, do we have any apologies for absences?
No, Chair, no apologies.
Thank you.
Members, do members have any declaration of disposable procuratory interests?
Members, please note the rules of procedure on pages 9 and 18 of the agenda.
Have we noted them?
Yep.
Thank you.
So, Simi, can you introduce those in attendance, please?
Thank you, Chair.
Item 3.1 is an application for a new premises licence for Karma Cans, 38 to 50 Pritchards Road, London E29AP.
For this application, Chair, we have Mr Jack Spiegler, who's legally representing the applicants,
and we have Ginny Newton and Sharon Alexander representing the applicants.
At present, we have no objectors who have registered to speak at this meeting,
so members will be asked to note and consider their written objections.
After the application has been presented, the applicant will be invited to speak,
and we'll be getting a total of five minutes to make their representation.
I'll let you know when you have one minute remaining.
Please note that the subcommittee have read the agenda packet in advance.
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Simi.
Can I ask Connie Holland, licence officer, to introduce the report, please?
Thank you, Chair.
This is an application for a new premise licence for Karma Cans Limited, 38 to 50 Pritchards Road.
Can I just note, there is no unit number shown in the application,
so I don't know whether or not it's for the whole of 38 to 50,
or there's meant to be a unit number in there.
A copy of the new application is enclosed in Appendix 1, and this is on page 26.
The application is described as a corporate and events catering service specialising in healthy and sustainable food
and ancillary dining and events room.
In 3.4, the timings of the licensable activities are listed.
They are actually sort of bit back to front.
So, the sale of alcohol that's being applied for, for on and off sales,
is Monday to Thursday, 8 till 11,
Friday to Saturday, 8 till 11.30,
and Sunday, 8 till 10.
And then the opening hours are 30 minutes after those.
And then late night refreshments is applied for Monday to Saturday,
11pm to 11.30.
Photographs of the venue are shown in Appendix 2 on page 48.
A site plan is in Appendix 3 on page 51.
A map showing the vicinity of the premises are in Appendix 4 on page 54.
And then other licence premises in the vicinity are in Appendix 5 on page 56.
There is two supplementary agendas to this application.
Supplementary agenda 1 is from the applicant,
which was mediation letters sent to the two residents who have made objections.
And supplementary agenda 2 is showing the response from those residents.
The two residents that have made an objection is shown in Appendix page 59 and 63.
On page 21 to 23 are the conditions that were volunteered by the applicant in the application.
There's one condition that's been...
That's the report.
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Connie.
Do members have any questions to the licensing officer?
Yeah.
Councillor, Mayor.
Thank you, Chair.
Just to clarify, on 7.1 around the wave training,
so there needs to be...
This is agreed with the police, you said?
This is a police...
This is a police...
A condition that the police have requested,
and the applicant has agreed to that.
That's fine.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Yes.
How many so-called objections have you received?
Any other objection?
People, how many so-called?
Two resident objections.
Thank you, Chair.
I don't have any questions.
I think your report was quite clear.
Thank you.
Can I ask the applicant to present their application?
You have five minutes.
Thank you, Chair.
The applicant company was founded by sisters at Jeannie and Eki over a decade ago.
They pride themselves on being long-standing, independent, and community-minded local business owners.
The business has historically specialized in sustainable and healthy catering for corporate functions and events.
And this application seeks authority to add the opportunity to provide a limited selection of alcohol by way of off-sale to this long-standing business offer.
And I understand that there are no objections to this element of the application, the off-sales.
Turning to the second element of the application, during the COVID pandemic, the applicant provided meals for NHS workers and local people.
And a number of recipients of those meals provided positive feedback, encouraging Eki and Jeannie to open up their doors and allow local people to eat their delicious food on-site rather than via the corporate catering business.
Jeannie and Jeannie and Eki listened to that feedback and, after a lot of careful planning, are now asking you to please grant this application to allow this new element of the business to open in the form of a small 45-seater eatery at their existing site.
Chair, in the papers you can see that the proposed hours for licensable activities are within your policy framework hours.
And there are no proposals for regulated entertainment or external drinking.
You will have also seen the robust operating schedule of model licence conditions and a further condition we've just discussed readily agreed with the police, all aimed at safeguarding the promotion of all four licensing objectives.
Significantly, and as a result of Eki and Jeannie's well-considered approach, there are no objections from your own expert advisors on policy and the licensing objectives being the responsible authorities.
The hearing is required, of course, due to those two local resident objections.
And you've seen in the supplemental pack that Eki wrote to each resident in May.
Neither resident chose to engage directly with the applicant following receipt of that letter, but we would like to emphasise that the applicant has an open-door policy for local residents should they have any feedback or concerns.
The residents, as they're not here, seem primarily concerned about the hours and the risk of noise.
You've heard me mention that the hours are in accordance with your framework hours, and I must emphasise, Chair, that those hours are absolutely business critical for this proposal in order to facilitate a second dinner sitting in the evening.
Any reduction in those hours would, unfortunately, make this venture unviable.
If you were reminded to kindly grant the application, the applicant would then be in a position to take proactive steps to address the concerns relating to noise.
For example, the applicant intends to install new glazing behind the existing roller shutter frontage.
You can see at page 48, and new acoustic panels to help mitigate the risk of noise outbreak and improve the current position.
All that is safeguarded by condition 8, at page 22 of your report relating to noise, which your environmental health team were happy with.
In addition to all that, the applicant would like to reassure you that they have carefully considered the feedback in the residents' representations,
and all of this will be taken into account when devising robust operational management controls, including the egress policy required by Volunteered Condition 7, also at page 22.
So, as a result, Chair, we respectfully submit that all the local resident concerns have been comprehensively addressed, including those distributed yesterday in the second supplemental pack,
which we'd be happy to address you on point by point if that would assist.
So, we hope, Chair, that you will agree, like your responsible authorities, that a small 45-capacity premises specialising in healthy food operated by community-minded and long-standing local family business within your policy hours and outside your CIZ
does not present a realistic possibility of any undue disturbance, and, in fact, the applicant very much hopes to make a positive addition to the local area and community,
all controlled and safeguarded by the strict enforceable conditions and policy-compliant hours proposed.
So, we therefore ask you to please grant this application, as agreed with the responsible authorities, to allow this independent local employer to flourish in the London Borough of Tower Hamnets and at all times operate responsibly and sympathetically alongside all of its...
So, we'll go straight on to members' questions.
Any questions from members?
Councillor Abdi Mohamed?
Thank you for coming and thank you for presenting.
You just offered to go through some of the kind of mitigations you were planning.
So, I would appreciate if you could just briefly go through some of the mitigations.
You've spoken about the extra glazing you're planning to put in, which I think is a perfectly welcome to local residents.
If you could expand briefly on some of the other mitigations, that'd be really helpful.
Yeah, yeah. So, in terms of the glazing, at page 48, I think it is, you can see pictures of the existing roller shutter.
So, at the moment, just for context, this is the kitchen that the applicant currently operates under.
The team play music in that kitchen every day anyway, and no noise complaints.
That's not been raised in the representations.
If the eatery is open, then some new glazing will go behind that, which will obviously provide a significant barrier against noise, also acoustic panels.
Condition 7 requires the egress policy, so there will be a dispersal policy, all aimed at making sure that when people leave the premises, they do so quickly, quietly, and respect the local residents.
The residents also raise concerns about external drinking.
They are worried that there will be external drinking.
There's no external drinking.
That was occasioned, because the applicants anticipated that might be a concern of local residents.
They've also expressed concerns about the hours, but as I've said, they are hours in line with your policy.
We would respectfully submit they're not late.
They are business critical, and it would allow for that second sitting to make sure that ECI and Gini can miss all happen,
and then investing in all those mitigations that I've just gone through.
They also wanted some clarification on the type of events, and we'd like to stress this is not, when we talk about events,
this is not big parties with dancing and DJs.
Gini would be able to talk you through it, but it might be pumpkin carving at Halloween,
or events to showcase cooking classes, events to showcase the food.
Hopefully, that helps, too.
Do you have any more questions?
I'd like to ask two questions.
That's okay.
I just wanted to find out a bit more about, say, for example, you say it's four to five,
you have a table, or you turn up a bit earlier, and your table isn't ready because people are already there.
How would you mitigate for people standing outside, waiting to be seated?
Because that could cause problems for people in terms of people speaking,
and especially quite late in the evening.
I wonder what you would be doing to mitigate any noise coming from that situation.
Yeah, so I think I'll let Gini expand on this, but Gini and Eki do have experience,
a lot of experience in restaurants, and a lot of that can be managed with the way,
depending on what time they come.
There might be a little bit of trial and error during the launch period,
but there will be room set aside for people to wait inside.
Gini, you've heard enough.
Hi.
Yeah, of course, in the design, that's also we plan an area around the bar,
so people can just actually use that space while they're waiting.
And as you said, we ran a restaurant in the past, and we had one sitting,
so it didn't actually flourish.
So that's where we kind of have really learned how the operations of a restaurant went.
And Eki, my sister and co, make it soundproof and upgrade the industrial building,
but also make the flow work really well, because it is small,
and it's only four to five carpets, so it's something we really have to bear in mind
to get a nice place to go, but also it's not loud for the locals.
Just quickly, sorry, just to ask.
So there's four to five people already.
That is the number that would fit in the door, exactly.
Other questions, sorry.
It's about the bins.
So obviously you're going to be cooking longer, there'll be more food waste.
By way of licensing conditions.
So we'll ignore that question.
I was going to say, Sharon can address you very briefly on that,
because it has been anticipated.
We obviously, our business is, Eki and Jeannie's business is catering.
So we spend, we pride ourselves in, number one, protecting the kitchen
from any form of infestation and around the neighbourhood.
And in fact, we have actually built special cages that are not outside our kitchen.
So sometimes the residents might think that the bins to the left of our front door are ours,
but they're not.
They are the next door business bins.
Our bins, if you're looking at the actual kitchen, are way to the right.
And they're in special steel containers so that nobody can dump anything.
And we are really, really careful with this.
We also have moved any collections of waste from early in the mornings,
because they used to collect early in the mornings, to mid-morning.
So it's not upsetting or disruptive to any local residents.
Thank you for explaining that.
I do sorry for asking, but thank you for being...
Thank you.
Just for clarification, obviously, Miss Holland hopefully pointed out
that at the moment the application appears to cover the entire block, 38 to 50.
Do the premises operate within a particular unit?
And if so, what's the unit number?
Yeah, so it's unit A, I think.
I think there was a...
When we were populating the online form, I'm not sure it came up,
but it's unit A.
It's unit A.
Unit alpha or eight?
Alpha.
Alpha.
Splendid.
Obviously, if the licence is granted, it will make specific reference to unit alpha.
That's helpful.
So they're obviously missing A.
I had a couple of other queries.
One of the things that the residents had flagged, obviously, the possibility,
particularly for operating and selling alcohol, is emptying of bottle banks.
So if the committee are minded to grant, would your client be happy with the condition
along the lines of no emptying of bottle banks to take place between, say, 21 or 2200 hours
until 0800 the following morning?
So again, it mitigates any impact.
I mean, we had actually discussed this, that in order to avoid any issues with the neighbours,
that we would bring all bottles, keep all bottles inside until the next day.
Yeah.
So, I mean, yeah, 10 o'clock would be better than 9 o'clock, but yeah, that's fine.
Thank you.
One other question, just because I think Councillor Abdi had touched on this very briefly,
so I'm just going to make a note of what's being said, otherwise I'll forget it.
Obviously, I appreciate you've agreed the condition with the police,
but it's perhaps not, this is condition about wave training.
It's possibly not the most brilliantly worded condition.
I'll say that.
So rather than all staff, there could be a quieter view, and bearing in mind,
obviously, wave training generally is much more aimed at the nighttime economy trade.
I think it might be that the members will be more inclined to suggest that the training is undertaken
by those with management responsibility in the premises, rather than every single member of staff.
What I was going to suggest, subject to your clients' thoughts and representative members might have to say,
is that it should be, rather than all staff, it should be the directors of the company,
the designated premises supervisor.
I know that the DPS is one of the directors anyway, but I suppose in case that's changes,
and any manager should be the ones who have that, and if there are any changes in those personnel,
that anyone coming in after that has training within one month of the change,
which obviously then gives a little bit of time for any appropriate arrangements to be made.
Thank you.
That's a sensible suggestion.
Absolutely agreed.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And now I'm going to give you one, Jack.
I mean, you've heard enough from me.
Thank you very much for listening.
Do you want to say anything?
I'll just say quickly, we've been part of the community for nine years,
and Eki and I, during COVID, as you were saying, were delivering to the NHS and to the local community.
This is such a community-led project that a lot of our residents have come to us and said,
we'd love a place to eat your food.
So for us, it's a really exciting development to our business.
We've been doing it for a long time, so we'd really appreciate you to grant us that permission.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for that.
So thank you for your contributions today.
The subcommittee will deliberate in a private session after this meeting ends,
and Semi from Democratic Services will send out the decision to you.
So I just need to mention application for new premises license for Venture 50 to 60 Charter Street,
London E2, E22, is it E22?
3AS.
This item was resolved prior to the meeting,
but for the record, we need to actually speak about that meeting.
I'm sorry, that license application.
Semi, can you announce any extension?
Chair, we have no applications to extend.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you for the contributions for this meeting.
It's now closed.