A café has been granted a drinks licence despite objections from neighbours.
Nowhere Man, in Upper North Street, Brighton, will be able to serve alcohol from 9am to 10pm every day after a licensing panel hearing.
Sussex Police withdrew its objection to the application after the café owner Andrew Marcantonio, 38, agreed to a number of conditions were a licence to be granted.
Mr Marcantonio agreed to restrict the sale of alcohol to people seated at tables and served by waiting staff – and he agreed that the premises should offer substantial food at all times.
After reading neighbours’ concerns about noise before the Brighton and Hove City Council licensing panel hearing, Mr Marcantonio offered to close the rear patio area to customers at 5pm each day.
At the panel hearing on Thursday 4 January, neighbours shared their concerns about customers making noise in the rear patio area and at the front of the venue.
Mr Marcantonio’s solicitor Piers Warne said that there had been issues in the café’s early years of trading but there had been no complaints about noise or disturbance in six years.
The licensing panel, made up of three councillors, Andrei Czolak, Emma Daniel and Julie Cattell, said that the conditions attached to the licence would be appropriate.
Granting the application, they said: “We have noted that should problems arise at the premises, residents will have more enforcement options open to them than would be the case if no licence were in force.”
