Agenda item

In accordance with Section 51 of the Licensing Act 2003, the Council has received an application from a member of the public for a review of the existing premises licence in respect of Cooling Castle Barn, Cooling Castle, Cooling, Rochester, Kent  ME3 8DT.

Discussion:

 

The Chairman asked those present to introduce themselves and explained the process that the hearing would follow as outlined in the agenda.

 

The Principal Licensing and Enforcement Officer said that, in accordance with the Licensing Act 2003, the Council had received an application for a review of the existing premises licence from a member of the public in respect of Cooling Castle Barn. The premises currently operated by way of a premises licence granted in accordance with the Licensing Act 2003. The application had been correctly advertised in the local press and notices had been displayed at the premises for the required timescale. A representation in support of the review had been received from the Environmental Protection Team, who were a Responsible Authority under the Licensing Act 2003. In addition, a significant number of representations had been submitted by interested parties opposing the review.

 

The following documents were included in the Agenda for the Panel’s consideration:

 

·         Appendix A - pages 11 to 16 – A copy of the current premises licence.

·         Appendix B – page 17 – A plan showing the location of the premises.

·         Appendix C - pages 19 to 24 – A copy of the application for review.

·         Appendix C1 – pages 25 to 92 and Supplementary Agenda No. 3 – The grounds for review submitted as part of the application for review. Two CDs containing recordings supporting these grounds had been submitted and at the hearing it was agreed that these may be played as part of the hearing proceedings.

·         Supplementary Agenda No. 1 – Appendix C2 pages 5 to 12 – Noise Data submitted as part of the application for review.

·         Appendices D1 and D2 – pages 93 to 176 - Submission from the licensee in objection to the review.

·         Appendices D3 and D4 – pages 177 to 242 - Copies of representations received from interested parties objecting to the review.

·         Supplementary Agenda No. 2 – Appendix D5 pages 3 to 38 – Further copies of representations received from interested parties objecting to the review.

·         Appendix E – Page 243 – A copy of the representation from the Environmental Protection Team Leader supporting the review.

 

The Principal Licensing and Enforcement Officer confirmed that no other representations had been received from members of the public or other responsible authorities.

 

The Chairman invited the applicant for review’s legal representative to present the application. Mr Charalambides began by stating that the application for review was not an attack on the venue, its employees or local people. Deregulation of regulated entertainment meant that the relevant conditions on the venue’s premises licence were likely suspended. The suggested conditions submitted with the review application, and detailed in Supplementary agenda no. 3 under the headings licensable activities and opening; use of external areas and smoking area; noise attenuation; noise and dispersal management plan; deliveries; bottle disposal; and security, sought to turn the good practice referred to in Ms Collins’ statement into a set of conditions that could be attached to the licence. Measures that had already been taken had failed, for example sound-proofing to the barn had been undermined by the use of a new sound system.

 

Mr Charalambides gave assurance that the two parties continued to co-operate. The Holland family continued to permit the taking of wedding photographs on their field and also provide land for excess parking on the venue’s open days. He questioned Ms Collins’ reference to ‘unreasonable’ and ‘trivial’ concerns in her statement as the loss of sleep that was being experienced by the Holland family amounted to public nuisance. With reference to statements on the venue’s website regarding the provision of champagne to bridal parties prior to 13:00 hours, he questioned whether the premises were currently correctly applying the conditions of its licence.

 

Mr Charalambides considered a redraft of the conditions attached to the premises licence to be vital as, in his opinion, there was effectively no operating schedule. The venue had grown and now hosted 300 weddings a year and was fully booked for 2018 and 2019. As the applicants for review did not wish to affect these bookings, he suggested that the restricted hours proposed in the review application be applied from 2 January 2020. This would give the business two years to prepare.

 

The suggested conditions in relation to the use of the external areas and smoking area aimed to provide a degree of clarity. It was proposed that the smoking area be located between the Barn and the accommodation block and that a restriction on the maximum number of people using it would be helpful. He considered that the suggested times for the use of the green area, 11:30 hours to 17:30 hours, were considered to be generous. The current unrestricted use of this area, and also the use of amplification, was of great concern. The requested noise attenuation measures reflected the fact that current restrictions only took effect for one hour on Fridays and Saturdays. It was requested that steel bands and bagpipes be added to suggested condition 13. Mr Charalambides also suggested that the licence revision could be addressed in a seasonable way. The suggested condition restricting delivery times was a standard condition that should be part of any modern licence.

 

The Panel heard some of the noise recordings that had been submitted by the applicant for review. These were examples of where the recording equipment located within the boundary of Cooling Castle had been triggered by incidents of shouting. Mr Charalambides indicated the time of each recorded incident, some of which were late at night caused by people staying in the accommodation block. He stressed that the persistent nature of these incidents contributed to the nuisance being experienced by the review applicants and concluded that the request to regulate the situation through the suggested conditions was not unreasonable.

 

On behalf of the Premises Licence Holder, Mr Grundy questioned Mr Lawrence, the Acoustic Consultant who had conducted the noise surveys on behalf of the review applicants. Mr Lawrence explained that the equipment had been set up to trigger recording at 55dB. He also explained that bird song could be heard on the recordings when a bird was perched close to where the equipment was located. Mr Grundy noted that a number of the recordings were short snapshots of loud voices, which had been collected over a 10 month period and were the worst cases over that period.

 

Mr Grundy questioned how often Mr and Mrs Holland resided at Cooling Castle and Mr Charalambides confirmed that it was their main home.

 

In response to questions from Panel members, Mr Charalambides confirmed that the applicants were seeking one or two days’ respite from the noise nuisance, preferably to include Sunday. Mrs Holland confirmed that double glazing had been fitted to her property but music and shouting could still be heard when the windows were closed and that noise bounced around the castle walls.

 

The Environment Protection Team Leader gave a statement in support of the application for a review of the licence. The statement related to patron noise in a rural area and the impact of a busy venue on a person’s right to the quiet enjoyment of their property. Due to the patron noise being intrusive intermittently throughout the day, Environmental Protection suggested that the use of the outside area for events and ceremonies be limited to three days a week. If the Panel concluded that this restriction was not appropriate, it was recommended that the outside area be closed at 21:00 hours – Sunday to Thursday, and 21:30 hours – Friday and Saturday. It was further recommended that only five patrons be allowed outside in a smoking area at any one time and that the area close at 23:00 hours – Sunday to Thursday and 23:30 hours – Friday and Saturday.

 

In response to questions from Mr Grundy on behalf of the Premises Licence Holder, the Environment Protection Team Leader said that she had put forward some suggestions on how the noise situation might be ameliorated.

 

The Chairman invited Mr Grundy to respond to the review application on behalf of the Premises Licence Holder. He questioned why the application for review form referred to all four Licensing Objectives; he considered that only the prevention of public nuisance was applicable. He noted that no mediation had been proposed and that the review application was only supported by Environmental Protection. In contrast, over fifty representations opposed the review application had been submitted. He also noted that, on appeal, the abatement notices served by the Council had been struck out except in relation to patron noise. He suggested that steps had been taken through other regulatory regimes and these had been effective. The Magistrates Court had found that there was no noise nuisance from amplified music and that Cooling Castle Barn was using best practice. The recordings of patron noise played at the hearing had been very short which demonstrated that the venue’s policies were already working. Mr Grundy therefore questioned whether this was a case of public nuisance. With reference to case law, Mr Grundy suggested that, where there was only one or two complainants, this constituted private rather than public nuisance.

 

Mr Gundy called Mr Thompson, an Acoustic Engineer, as a witness. Mr Thompson explained how he took noise recordings including calibration and the setting of reference levels. He noted that the bird song on the recordings made for the review applicant was very loud and suggested that the recordings be considered with caution or rejected. He responded to technical questions from the Environmental Protection Officer on this matter.

 

Ms Collins, the Premises Licence Holder, gave a statement and stressed that Cooling Castle Barn was an extremely responsible company which went to great lengths to minimise the impact on all its neighbours. She referred to the venue’s Noise Management Policy contained within the Agenda and advised that the situation was evaluated every day. The company had responded to each complaint from Mr and Mrs Holland and the sound system used was highly directional and minimised the bass level. Security was on site and the use of stewards would be inappropriate. Security staff became more involved with visitors from 7:00pm when a daily briefing was held. At the end of events, staff in the Barn did not go home until all customers had left.

 

Ms Collins said that the company could invest in new air conditioning but that this would not be possible if the days of operation were restricted. With reference to the suggestion that a smoking area be positioned between the Barns and the accommodation block, she explained that the Police were against this proposal as it would be located over a service road. Any restriction in the use of the garden area would make the venue less appealing.

 

Mr Grundy called Mrs Bird as a witness. She explained that she lived next door to the venue and had written a letter in support of it. In response to question from Mr Charalambides she confirmed that a family member worked at the venue.

 

Mr Grundy called Mrs Adams who explained that she had worked at the venue for 10 years. She praised the company as an employer and stressed the efforts that the company had made in response to complaints from Mr and Mrs Holland.

 

Mr Grundy also called Mr Howard who supplied wine and spirits to the venue. He praised the company’s professionalism.

 

Mr Tappenden, who had worked at the venue as a Toastmaster, and Mr Shine, who provided door supervisors, also spoke in favour of the company.

 

A Panel member sought clarification from Ms Collins on the location of the proposed smoking area. She confirmed that planning consent had not yet been sought.

 

All parties were invited to sum up and Mr Charalambides said that nuisance should not be assessed against the number of people who had complained. He referred to the statement from the Environmental Protection Team Leader regarding the potential for patron noise and said that Mr and Mrs Holland had only applied for a review after all other measures had failed. All proposals had been ignored by Cooling Castle Barn management who had not been willing to engage with the applicants or the licensing regime. It was unusual for the premises licence for a venue of this size to have no proper conditions and those suggested in the review application were good practice and offered a carefully considered and balanced solution.

 

In summing up, Mr Grundy said that the suggested conditions were extreme and that the suggestion that the company was not engaging with the licensing regime demonstrated why the review application must fall. Mrs Holland had said that the configuration of the castle walls meant that noise reverberated around but the Barn was not responsible for that. The neighbour who lived next to the venue on the other side had confirmed that she was not impacted by noise and the Environmental Protection Team Leader had not said that anyone else was impacted. The company was happy for the noise management plan to be a condition of the licence.

 

The Chairman asked all parties to leave the room during the Panel’s deliberations.

All parties were subsequently asked to return and the Chairman advised that, due to the complexities of the case, the Panel had decided to continue its deliberations on another day and reach a decision within five working days in accordance with the legislation.

 

The meeting was adjourned and reconvened on 15 March 2018 when the Panel continued its deliberations in the presence of only the local authority’s Principal Lawyer and Democratic Services Officer.

 

Conclusions of the Panel

 

The Panel had listened intently to all evidence presented by all parties and concluded that the prevention of public nuisance was the relevant Licensing Objective in this case. Members concluded that there was no doubt that some of the activities of the Barn had caused some nuisance to the residents of Cooling Castle. However, the Panel considered to what degree this nuisance was contrary to the promotion of the prevention of public nuisance Licensing Objective, having regard to the nature of the operation of the business and its proximity to Cooling Castle.

 

The Panel considered that a major issue was the Barn’s Noise Management Policy, Version 2. August 2017 that had been generated in response to the Licensing Authority’s direction. The Panel concluded that the policy needed to be formally reviewed and agreed by the local authority’s Environmental Protection Team.

 

The Panel considered that, overall, the hours of operation of the Barn’s licensable activities were not contentious. However, the Panel concluded that the licensable activity in the garden and outside areas needed to be more heavily regulated and a designated smoking area needed to be established, to restrict the movement of patrons and any consequential noise that would constitute public nuisance.

 

Decision

 

1.    In considering the application to review the premises licence for Cooling Castle Barn, Cooling Castle, Cooling, Rochester, Kent, ME3 8DT, the Licensing Hearing Panel had regard to the Licensing Act 2003, the statutory guidance issued under S182 of the Act, the Council’s Statement of Licensing Policy and all matters before it, both written and oral.

 

2.    The Panel determined the following which it considered to be proportionate and appropriate in order to meet the Licensing Objectives, particularly the prevention of public nuisance:

 

(a)  That a Noise Management Policy is to be implemented at the venue, the policy is to be agreed with the local authority’s Environmental Protection Team and reviewed annually.

 

(b)  That access to the garden and outside area will not be permitted after 22.00 hours - Sunday to Thursday, and 22.30 hours - Friday and Saturday.

 

(c)  That a designated smoking area, screened from any open space, will be established in a   location agreed by the Environmental Protection Team and the Licensing Authority. The smoking area will be closed one hour before the closing time of the premises on any day. No drinks will be permitted in the smoking area.