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Legal bid to halt bakery booze sale
Priests and parishioners fear noisy revellers would ‘spoil their peace’
A BLOOMSBURY church has hired lawyers to help them fight a bid from a neighbouring bakery to serve alcohol.
St Anselm and St Cecilia Church in Lincoln’s Inn Field’s has instructed solicitors after the Fleet River Bakery – which shares a party wall with them – outlined its plan to sell alcohol.
Father David Barnes and his parishioners are worried that noise and revelry from the bakery will be heard in the priest’s living quarters, potentially disturbing their peace and ruining prayer group meetings.
They took the unusual step of employing lawyers after the bakery’s owner, Jonathan Dalton, renewed his bid to sell alcohol following an earlier rejection in January.
Father Barnes said: “We are taking legal representation and guidance. Our objection to the resubmitted application still holds.”
He said the premise of the bakery broke all four of the Town Hall’s licensing objectives – a series of safeguards designed to protect the public and children from nuisance drinking establishments.
But Mr Dalton, better known as the bowling kingpin who reinvented the scene with his popular Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes, has come back fighting.
He has set up an online petition which has attracted hundreds of messages of support.
As a sweetener, he has pledged not to serve alcohol on Sundays, but insists his unique project to bring baking back to Holborn and serve Parisian coffees to the sounds 1930s swing music is welcomed in the area.
“We’ve got a massive amount of support,” he said.
“Locals are loving it because its something different and serving a need in the community.”
One of the bakery’s selling points is that it is a one-off business rather than a chain, he added.
But Coral Olson, parish co-ordinator for the church, denied they were the only group against the bakery, pointing out objections from a nearby primary school and petitions signed by students from the London School of Economics.
Ward councillor Julian Fulbrook called Mr Dalton’s choice to open the bakery next to a church as “inconceivable”.
Ms Olson said the church objected to the “whole project” and planned to fight Mr Dalton’s bid at a planning level.
Both sides insist the clash isn’t personal, but with neither party willing to back down it will be up to Town Hall chiefs to determine whether there is room for compromise. |
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