A new coffee shop can go ahead after the business owner was granted planning permission to make changes to a property in Hove.
The changes would bring an empty premises back into use and involve the replacement of a previous extension, the addition of two dormer windows and turn the upstairs office into a flat.
Brighton and Hove City Council’s Planning Committee voted eight to two in favour of the proposal for 6 Westbourne Place at a meeting at Hove Town Hall yesterday (Wednesday 2 September).
Nine neighbours objected to the application, according to a report to councillors, while 26 people wrote in support of the plan.
Objectors’ concerns included noise, smells from the kitchen extractor fan and harm to the Sackville Gardens Conservation Area.
Councillors were told that the proposal was considered to preserve the character and appearance of the building itself and the conservation area.
Conditions attached to the planning permission would control the opening hours, use of the rear garden for commercial purposes and any extraction and sound insulation.
The supporting comments welcomed the prospect of an empty shop coming back into use as an independent business as well as the potential for an increase in activity in the area.
One neighbour, Margaret Parkes, spoke against the application at the Planning Committee meeting yesterday afternoon.
She said: “Outdoor seating and any use of the garden for customer seating would create an unacceptable level of noise nuisance and loss of privacy to the neighbours’ gardens.
“Any commercial use front and back is inappropriate in our conservation area.”
She said that neighbours were also concerned about early opening hours and a seven-day operation, with baking starting at 5am.
Draft conditions on the application permitted opening hours from 7am to 5pm from Monday to Friday and from 8am to 4pm at weekends and on bank holidays.
The back garden would be limited tcommittee members o opening at 10am, with the same closing time as the premises, with five customers allowed outside.
Planning agent Henry Wagstaff, from Wilbury Planning, representing the applicant, Ellie Barber, said that noise from the garden and extraction system would be dealt with through planning conditions.
He said: “Representations of support outnumbered objections by around three to one.
“This application proposes to put a vacant building back into active use, with an independent and local business created and an additional home delivered.”
Miss Barber said that her business would be called Frank’s after her grandfather and her miniature schnauzer.
She said: “My grandad had an amazing ability to talk to anyone. Those everyday conversations and familiar faces in his Richardson Road community became his life – and that feeling of connection is exactly what inspired Frank’s.
“Building Frank’s at 6 Westbourne Place alongside my mum, who lives on the road itself, and with my dad who lives just around the corner … this is our home and being good neighbours genuinely matters to us.”
She said that the 5am start would involve proving dough rather than baking from so early. The extractor fan would be internal.
The committee was told that the flexibility of the planning category meant that the coffee shop did not require change of use.
Conservative councillor Carol Theobald was one only two to vote against the application, raising concerns about early morning noise.
Councillor Theobald said: “I do feel sorry for the neighbour who doesn’t want it there if it does wake her up on the morning – and the extractors can sometimes be noisy.
“I don’t like them and there’ll be a lot of people sitting in the garden. I think it’s probably the wrong place.”
Brighton and Hove Independent councillor Bridget Fishleigh cited the saga of Cin Cin’s extractor fan, in Western Road, Hove, where neighbours called for a licence review before the noise problems were resolved.
Before voting to refuse the application, Councillor Fishleigh said: “Obviously there’s a reason why there’s never been a café on that strip of commercial properties because it’s not suitable.
“If I lived in a terraced place and my next door neighbour wanted to open a café with a garden right next to where I sat, I’d be absolutely devastated.”
She urged Miss Barber to find a different location.
Labour councillor Tobias Sheard said that he understood neighbours’ concerns but did not want the small shopping area to decay.
Councillor Sheard said: “These aren’t high streets but a loss of these little shopping spaces, these little community corners can have, if left vacant, can cause so much more trouble down the line than what is bring proposed.
“We all are aware of the damage of the declining high street and these declining small corners and these kind of applications are very good.”
Green councillor Kerry Pickett said: “I get the worry about the noise and everything but we do have conditions and environmental health so they can resolve any issues that may come up.”
How terribly interesting.
We are told that representations in support outnumbered objections by around three to one – apparently a fact worthy of particular mention when councillors considered the application.
Lady Bracknell cannot help recalling the King Alfred affair, where the arithmetic of public opinion was rather more inconvenient and consequently seemed to acquire considerably less importance.
So do numbers of supporters and objectors matter when determining such things, or do they not? One begins to suspect that public opinion is rather like a planning policy at Hove Town Hall – tremendously important when it supports the desired conclusion and rather more flexible when it does not.
Still, I wish Frank’s every success. An independent café bringing an empty premises back into use sounds rather lovely. It is merely the council’s sudden enthusiasm for counting objections that has raised an eyebrow.
One rule for the biscuit tin, another for the grand redevelopment, perhaps.
Oh I do love a jammy dodger.