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Objectors curb 2am drinks bid
NEIGHBOURS have claimed a partial victory after a bar was told it can stay open until 2am on only one night a week.
While licensing chiefs have allowed Walkabout in Finchley Road, West Hampstead, to serve booze until 2am on Saturday nights, they rejected an application for similar hours on Thursdays and Fridays.
Instead, Monday’s licensing panel ruled that the 400-capacity bar, one of the biggest in the area, must close at midnight on Thursdays and 1am on Fridays.
Residents protested at the 2am closing bid, arguing that the extended hours would lead to late-night, anti-social behaviour and would mean sleepless nights for neighbours.
Michael Lynn, who lives just 150 feet away in Netherhall Gardens, claimed sound is amplified because of the “loudspeaker” shape of the O2 Centre’s entrance, where Walkabout is housed.
He added: “We’re woken regularly after midnight by noise in front of the O2 Centre. This is a residential area, it is not Soho or Camden Town Mark II.”
He warned that many of the 200-odd people leaving at 2.30am, after drinking-up time, would wake up neighbours by shouting and fighting, while others had been known to urinate in back streets.
Walkabout, part of a nationwide franchise, is popular with Australian and New Zealand tourists. It is known for serving snakebite, a part-cider, part-lager drink which is not sold in many other bars because of its potency.
At Monday’s meeting, Walkabout said its variety of snakebite was made with weak drinks.
Terry Walker, chairman of Canfield Place Residents’ Association, said: “That’s rubbish. People drink that to ‘get on it’ [get drunk]. It’s awful, I’ve drunk it myself.”
Anna Mathias, solicitor for Walkabout, told the panel she was not trying to “belittle” the objectors, but questioned what level of disturbance the bar caused.
She said: “There are six lanes of traffic between us and Netherhall Gardens. The public nuisance hasn’t been directly linked to our establishment.”
She also promised the bar would play quieter music 30 minutes before customers leave, to “produce an ambient environment so people talk more quietly before they leave and are less likely to shout outside”.
Labour councillor Pat Callaghan, one of the two-member panel which limited 2am closing to Saturday night, said: “Maybe I’m an old-fashioned so-and-so but traditionally the going-out night is Saturday. I don’t see why the community should suffer two nights in a row.”
Under the terms of the new licence, at least two doormen must stand outside the bar at closing time to disperse drinkers.
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