Bosham café granted alcohol licence

Shoreside Café, in High Street, was granted a premises licence by Chichester District Council’s licensing sub-committee on Tuesday (July 9).

The licence allows the café to sell alcohol every day between 11.30am and 3.40pm, with the café itself being open from 9.30am to 4pm.

The council received 22 objections to the application from members of the public, with concerns raised including noise, litter, antisocial behaviour and congestion along the narrow road.

Initially, Sussex Police also raised concerns but these were dropped following discussions with the applicant, Millstream Hotel (Bosham) Limited.

Millstream, which also owns the nearby Pop-In Cafe, had asked for the licence to cover the sale of alcohol from 9.30am, continuing to 7.40pm for the occasional event.

But it was agreed to reduce the regular hours and drop the late closing option completely.

Millstream also agreed to a number of conditions proposed by Sussex Police, such as: training for all staff who would be involved in selling alcohol, alcohol to be served to tables by waiting staff, and the café to operate a Challenge 25 policy of ID checks.

In addition, a record of refused sales must be kept, to be reviewed by designated premises supervisor Ann Brierly at intervals of no less than four weeks.

Ms Brierly told the meeting that the café had had requests from customers to be able to ‘enjoy a wine or beer while looking over the harbour enjoying their food’.

She added: “We under no circumstances want to upset anybody in the village.”

She listed a number of times the café had responded to the concerns of residents – they stopped serving Mr Whippy ice cream because of the local ice cream man, they made sure fridge lights weren’t visible in the evenings in deference to the dark skies policy, and they went back to using crockery rather than takeaway cups after littering concerns were raised.

She told the meeting that alcohol would only be served with food, there would be no seating outside, and no one would be able to take glassware out of the café.

Some residents were still not impressed.

One called the hotel the ‘Liz Truss of the commercial catering sector’ and wondered why the complaints from neighbours had not been foreseen.

She called the application ‘wholly misconceived’ and ‘irrational’ adding that taking action after objections were received was ‘simply not good enough’.

The three-strong committee approved the application.