Prince of Peckham Licence: Bid to Lift 11pm Outside Curfew

The Prince of Peckham has asked Southwark Council to remove the two conditions that limit how its outside area is used. Two council teams have objected, and so have four other people. A licensing sub-committee will decide the application at 10am on Tuesday 20 October, online.

The pub is at 1 Clayton Road, SE15, on the corner with Peckham High Street. It is run by The Arbuthnot Group Ltd, which applied to vary its premises licence on 18 August. The details are in the officer’s report to the sub-committee.

What the pub is asking for

The application has three parts:

• add the basement to the licensed area
• remove condition 843: no more than 20 customers in the outside area by Peckham High Street at any time
• remove condition 850: no use of any outside area after 11pm, except for up to six smokers in a designated spot

The opening hours and alcohol hours are not changing. On Fridays and Saturdays the pub can already sell alcohol until 2am and stay open until 2.30am, under the licence issued in April 2017.

In place of the two conditions, the pub has offered an outside management plan. It promises an extra SIA door supervisor at busy times, a duty manager always on site, signs asking customers to be quiet, and a 30 to 60 minute wind-down so people leave gradually. Customers who are noisy outside after 10pm and refuse to quieten down would be banned.

Why the council objects

Nobody objects to the basement. The council’s environmental protection team says it was already in use but missing from the licensed plans, which licensing officers and the Metropolitan Police found on recent visits.

The objections are to dropping the outside limits. They are set out in the responsible authorities’ representations.

The environmental protection team says removing both conditions would leave no limit at all on how many people could stand outside, or on how late. It calls that “a significant change”. It says the outside area sits in a busy mixed-use street with homes nearby. It also says some of the problems reported to the authorities have involved that space.

The team warns of a higher risk of:

• noise from people talking and gathering outside
• disturbance to residents late in the evening and at night
• harder dispersal at closing time
• more public nuisance from unrestricted outdoor use

The council’s licensing unit objects on public nuisance and crime and disorder grounds. It does not oppose the pub using the outside area differently. It wants the pub to propose its own new customer numbers, so that officers can enforce them, and to turn the plan’s promises into specific conditions. If that happened, it says, it would withdraw its objection.

The pub had not responded to the objections when the report was written. The licensing unit notes that the pub is inside the council’s Peckham cumulative impact area.

Complaints and late-night events this year

The report lists three complaints in the past 12 months. Two came from customers in July, one alleging an assault and one about overcrowding. The third, in August, came from a resident and was about a fight between customers and noise from people leaving. These are complaints logged by the council, not findings.

The pub has also used temporary event notices to open from 12.30am to 4am for up to 350 people on several dates this year:

None drew a counter notice.

What it means for you

• If you live near Clayton Road or Peckham High Street, the decision on 20 October sets how many people can be outside the pub and how late. The four representations from other people are already in; new objections cannot be made at this stage.
• You can watch the hearing. It is held online. The agenda page carries the meeting link and all the documents.
• If you drink there, nothing changes inside. The hours stay the same either way.
• If you have a problem with noise from any licensed premises, report it to Southwark’s noise team. The council’s complaints log is part of what a sub-committee reads.

The sub-committee can grant the variation, refuse it, or grant it with new conditions. We will report the decision.

More on what is changing in the area: Peckham and Dulwich planning news.