Residents of Mayes Road complained the move would have disturbed elderly neighbours, reports Simon Allin, Local Democracy Reporter

Mayes Road in Wood Green and (inset) shisha being heated in a hookah (credit Alena Plotnikova via Unsplash)

A Wood Green bar’s bid to open a shisha area until later in the evening has been turned down by councillors.

Haringey Council’s licensing subcommittee refused an application by District 22 in Mayes Road to allow the shisha area at the rear of bar to stay open until midnight Monday–Thursday and until 12.30am on Saturdays and Sundays.

A condition on the bar’s licence, which the owners wanted to remove, means the shisha area must currently close by 10.30pm.

Opponents of the plan claimed during a meeting on 30th January that approving the later opening times would lead to elderly neighbours being disturbed by noise. The owners argued that they had put a plan in place to ensure noise would not become a statutory nuisance.

In a decision announced after the meeting, the licensing subcommittee noted that residents had complained about “loud music, loud talking and cars being revved in the area by the applicant’s clientele”.

The committee added: “As it is an open shisha area, which already created noise nuisance, increasing the hours to later at night past midnight and with the potential for another hour of dispersal time, noise disturbance could last until 1-2am in the morning.

“Furthermore, it was noted the last order for food would be 10.30pm so the proposed increased hours would be purely for alcohol consumption and so the potential for nuisance behaviour could increase.”

Councillors acknowledged that a noise management plan had been submitted but said they “could not accept without expert evidence that noise levels were 60-61 decibels or even that those were acceptable levels of noise”, adding that no information had been provided to support the claims.

An application to allow the bar to sell alcohol from 11am instead of from 4pm was approved by councillors.

The decision is subject to a 21-day appeal period and does not take effect until the end of this period or until an appeal is dispensed with.

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