Big Fat Panda trendy night club permission refused

1 min read
281 Lavender Hill SW11 1LP - Big Fat Panda

On Tuesday 19th May, the Licensing sub-committee refused the application from Grand Union to transform Big Fat Panda restaurant into a bar/night-club. 

Councillors Peter Dawson and James Cousins, along with 3 local residents raised numerous concerns highlighting the inadequacy of the proposal.

The report from the officers counted 61 objections made, including 3 letters from Ward Councillors (one on behalf of all the Ward Councillors of Shaftesbury and Northcote Wards). They raised concerns regarding street drinking and alcohol related disorder, anti-social behaviour, crime and loitering of patrons outside the proposed premises, increased risk of violence to customers both inside and outside the venue, noise (deliveries, arriving and leaving, external area)…etc.

Despite the applicants prepared to make several amendments such as reducing capacity from 500 to 385, using the outside area for smokers only, closing at 1.30am instead of 3.3oam, they faced strong opposition during the meeting. In the minutes of the meeting it is noted that:

  • Police were opposed to the application in its entirety
  • The Residential Services Manager – Environmental Services (Council) said that he was opposed to any extension of hours beyond the guideline hours.
  • Councillor Cousins said that the area was heavily residential [and] not a suitable venue for this part of Lavender Hill.

The decision said:

“The Sub-Committee considered that given the scale of what was proposed the granting the licence, even as amended, would in their view create an unacceptable level of noise nuisance both during the evening and late at night to neighbouring residents.”

Planning application withdrawn

A planning application 2015/1597 from Grand Union bars was proposing a change of use from A3 (restaurant and cafe) to A4 use (drinking establishment), including use of garden, area until late nights, with music and DJs, at the location currently occupied by the Big Fat Panda, a Chinese buffet restaurant. With the licensing application refused, Grant Union withdrew its planning application.

Residents felt very well and effectively represented and were delighted by the outcome. However this isn’t necessarily the end of it all. Grand Union can still appeal and possibly reapply for the drinks license later, lowering the opening hours or the number of customers (although the Council said that even 50% was still unacceptable).

We support the local residents thinking that the location is not suitable at all for this kind of business. Instead it could be used for a café/family oriented area, in line with its surrounding.

 

Did you like reading this article? Help us writing more!

Clapham Junction Insider (formerly called CJAG website) has been publishing local news for more than 14 years and remains committed to providing local community information and public interest journalism.

We aim to feature as much as possible on community campaigns and initiatives, local societies, charities based in the area, fundraising efforts by residents and helping residents.

We've always done that and won't be changing, in fact we'd like to do more.

Until recently, all stories, analysis and reports published have been made with the great help of many volunteers. However, at the end of the day it cost time and efforts and we are frustrated that we cannot do more: there are many subjects that we would like to cover but we need financial resources to help us providing regular information.

We are therefore asking our readers to consider offering financial support to these efforts. Any money given will help support community and public interest news and the expansion of our coverage in this area.

2 ways of supporting our project

Do you think what we are doing is helping the community and you want to encourage us to do more? We have set up two ways of supporting our project:

  1. Paypal: For one-off contributions, you can just use your bank card. However if you wish to encourage and support us regularly with a small amount, you will need a Paypal account to set up a monthly subscription. Click here to donate.
  2. Patreon: this is a well-known membership platform that connects content creators with supporters. Mainly, it offers financial tools that let supporters subscribe to projects that give creators a predictable income stream as they continue to create content. Click here to subscribe and support us regularly.

If you do support us in this way we'd be interested to hear what kind of articles you would like to see more of on the site – send your suggestions to the editor.

CJI editor and Clapham Junction Action Group co-founder and coordinator since 2008, Cyril has lived in Clapham Junction since 2001.
He is also funder and CEO of Habilis-Digital Ltd, a digital agency creating and managing websites and Internet solutions.