Brighton and Hove councillors to make it harder to obtain a drinks licence

Tougher licensing rules look likely to be applied to a much wider area of Brighton and Hove.

The venues most affected will be late-night takeaways and off-licences, night clubs and super pubs.

The latter are sometimes referred to in licensing circles as high-volume vertical drinking establishments, where there is little seating, meaning large numbers can be crammed in to stand and drink.

The crackdown will be selective, with restaurants, traditional pubs and venues such as theatres and cinemas being favoured.

The centre of Brighton is currently treated as a “cumulative impact area”.

This means that applications for a new alcohol licence are routinely turned down unless pub, club or shop owners can show that existing drink-related problems will not be made worse.

The main problems are noise nuisance, crime and disorder and anti-social behaviour.

Councillors and officials are concerned that a wider area has now reached saturation point, with too many licensed premises.

As a result, officials are advising councillors to extend the cumulative impact area into the North Laine and along Western Road into Hove. In the east the boundary will be at Upper Rock Gardens and Lower Rock Gardens.

The council said that it had carried out a 12-week consultation during which time 83 per cent of respondents agreed with the extension of the cumulative impact area.

The same consultation found 79 per cent in favour of expanding the “special stress areas” which are also closely monitored for drink-related problems.

One of 178 people who responded to the council through its website said: “The area covered already suffers badly from drunkenness, the result of the granting of an excessive number of licences by the council.”

Another said: “The prevalence of the numbers of corner shops providing sales of liquor appears to be increasing and the sheer availability of outlets can only fuel consumption.”

And another said: “I am fed up with groups of drunken people making their way past my property from pubs, night clubs, etc. Often they sit on the bench outside my bedroom shouting, swearing, etc. The police are as good as useless. They have only once turned up when contacted and then the persons concerned returned about 15 minutes later. I can assure you it’s not much fun being woken up at five in the morning by these morons.”

If approved, a new special stress area will take in much more of the city, stretching from Holland Road in Hove in the west to Freshfield Road, Brighton, in the east.

The new special stress area will also take in London Road, The Level, the bottom end of Lewes Road, Hanover, the Seven Dials and the area around Brighton station.

Brighton Marina would not be restricted by the main changes.

Brighton and Hove City Council said that it had consulted residents, businesses, licensees, Sussex Police and other interested parties.

The council said that the cumulative impact area and special stress area were necessary to tackle Brighton’s drink problem.

Designating areas in this way allows councillors to take into account the impact of other licensed premises in the area when considering applications for new licences or variations to existing ones.

Under the proposed regime new licences would not be issued unless there were exceptional reasons for doing so.

The council licensing committee is expected to agree the proposal on Thursday (17 November). It will then have to be agreed by the full council.