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Cafe blunder leaves park users hungry
• I WOULD like to correct two matters raised in the article Park Café Blunder in the CNJ December 7 about the Terrace Restaurant in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Firstly, the planning permission for the café was granted, on the council’s own application, in April 2005 not October 2005. The Terrace opened in October 2005.
Secondly, Mr Williams has not yet been granted a 20-year lease, he is occupying with permission. The scrutiny committee, which interested parties, including myself, attended, upheld the executive’s decision that such a lease should be granted, subject to the council officers trying to negotiate some terms asked for by the Covent Garden Community Association (CGCA). These included having more café type refreshments available for park users and excluding some parkland from the lease.
Whether such terms can be negotiated remains to be seen. Certainly the CGCA are correct in contending that the Terrace, whilst a fine restaurant, is not the kind of facility one would expect to see in a public park.
Its menu is no doubt excellent for business lunches, but is not welcoming for the ordinary park users.
The actual planning application was for a café to replace the former café. However as a planning application for a café would include a restaurant use, there was nothing to stop the building being put out to tender by the council as an up market restaurant, which is what happened.
It appears from the article that when the planning permission was granted to the council it had inadvertently not been made clear by the park’s department that a restaurant and not a café was what was intended.
If it had been, I think the planners would have looked at the application more carefully. Hence the comments by Councillor Brian Woodrow as to an “in-house failure”. A failure of course for which the ordinary park users are suffering. They have lost their café and cant’ afford the restaurant.
JILL M GIBSON
Radcliffe Chambers
New Square Lincoln’s Inn, WC2
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