Agenda, decisions and minutes

RESOLVED that the minutes of the meeting of the Licensing Committee held on 15 January 2018 be confirmed and signed.

Councillor Millbank said that she is the ward councillor for the area in which Oregano Leaf is situated. She did not have any pecuniary interest in this application.

In the matter of the application for a full variation of a Premises Licence, the Committee has considered the relevant representations made.

The Committee has made the following determination:

With a view to ensuring the promotion of the licensing objectives, in accordance with the provisions of the statutory guidance and the principles of our licensing policy, the application for a full variation of a premises licence was REFUSED as applied for.

In coming to a determination, the following factors were taken into account;

1.         Members of the Committee considered the representations made by Police, Planning and Crime, Enforcement and Regulation (CER) team.  There is only one condition on the licence; CCTV must be on the premises and record for 31 days. This condition has been in breach since July 2017. Visits from officers have found the CCTV not to be working for 31 days, the cameras were not correctly labelled and the premises licence was not displayed.

2.         The family have been told by CER service four times that it must operate a fully functioning CCTV system, in addition, they have attended this Committee on three occasions when they were reminded of their obligation to uphold the conditions on their licence.

3.         The premises is in the CIZ and there is usually a presumption that applications for new premises licences or variations to existing premises licences, will be refused unless it can be demonstrated that the grant will not negatively impact on the licensing objectives. The premises licence holder had not demonstrated this; staff could not operate the CCTV system even if it was functioning correctly.

4.      The Committee noted that the premises does not have planning permission to trade after midnight.

5.      The Committee noted the representation made by the premises licence holder. He had been let down by a technician who had not connected the CCTV correctly. The premises licence was not displayed because the member of staff who took the licence off the wall to photocopy, forgot to put it back.

6.      The Committee noted that CER, Police and Planning officers had given the premises licence holder a lot of advice, but the conditions were still breached.

7.      The Committee agreed that the application should not be granted because it would put the four licencing objectives at risk.

          An appeal against this decision may be made to the Magistrates Court within 21 days from the date of this letter.

3.1      The Chair welcomed all parties to the meeting and introductions were made. She then invited Ms Spall to introduce the application.

            Licensing Officer   

3.2      Ms Spall said that members were being asked to consider this application for the variation of a premises licence for Oregano Leaf 98 New Cross Road SE14 5BA. Representations had been received from the Police, Crime, Enforcement and Regulatory (CER) service and Planning.  She outlined the current licence and the proposed variation to this licence.

            Representation

3.3      Ms Spall said that the CER service considered it necessary to submit a representation against the full variation to enable Oregano Leaf to trade until 2am Monday – Thursday and 3am Friday – Sunday. Since the last full variation hearing on 15 September 2017, the CER service has made various unannounced visits to the premises. At a meeting of the Licensing Committee 15 September 2017, Mr Zardad Momtaz was in charge of the premises and was advised at that hearing of his conditions which, at that time were in breach, namely the 2 conditions regarding CCTV.

3.4      On 18 September 2017, CER officers visited the premises and the breaches had been rectified. Shortly after this, in November 2017, Mr Allahdad Momtaz took over the running of the premises. Ms Spall said that she has had many meetings with Mr Momtaz at the council offices and he is fully aware of the conditions on his licence and of all the previous issues during 2017.

3.5      On 24 November 2018, Ms Spall said that with P.C Gerry and officers from the immigration service, she attended the premises as part of a planned operation in the borough inspecting takeaways. Mr Allahdad Momtaz was on the premises at the time. It was noted that there was no functioning CCTV in the premises. When challenged,  Mr Allahdad told her that it works ‘now and then’. In addition, no other member of staff knew how to operate the CCTV when questioned.  During this visit, it was also noted that the summary licence was not displayed, which, with the CCTV, made 3 breaches of the licence during that visit alone. All these breaches are offences under section 57/4 and 57/7 of the Licensing Act 2003.

3.6      Following one of the visits to the premises, P.C Gerry left Mr Momtaz with an action plan to get the CCTV working, train staff and display the summary premises licence. Ms Spall wrote to Mr Momtaz on 26 November 2017, explaining the breaches in detail and the fact that the action had to be complied with to ensure that they satisfied the conditions on the licence.

3.7      On 10 January 2019, CER officers carried out a follow up visit to see whether the action plan had been adhered to. On arrival it was evident that the summary licence was still not on display. Staff present were asked about the CCTV. They said that it had been fixed straight after officers visited in November 2018 and that it recorded for  ...  view the full minutes text for item 63.