Asda have applied for a 24-hour license to sell alcohol. The licensing application is 07/00381/LAPRE and the deadline for sending comments to the council is 26/09/2007.
You can find the licensing application on the council’s website here, but full details can only be seen on the little notices around the Asda site.
This is unbelievable. Can you imagine what these people who live near Asda would have to put up with. If this gets the green light it will have been a stitch-up. I would urge all who live near Asda to protest strongly. I thought they were a ‘Community Company’ which community are they talking about!
I quite agree. Why are Asda applying for a licence to sell alcohol 24 hours a day when the store opening hours on all previous unsucessful and sucessful planning applications have clearly stated that store opening hours would not be 24 hours.
This supermarket is within a residential area and this authority would have a detrimental effect on noise and traffic. It would invaribly encourage youths to congregate in and around the area as comes hand in hand with these types of venues.
It is a certain fact that a store open 24 hours with or without such a licence would impact on the local community in a negative fashion and is not necessary.
I presume this is the next stage in constructing the Asda Rayleigh Festival Leisure Park. No doubt the next application will be for a cinema and lap dancing club.
Who makes the decision over this, is it the council? Are the Planning Dept involved, as they’ll recommmend acceptance for sure.
How can they apply for this without opening the entire store, which I understood had it’s hours limited by the Planning Inspectorate decision.
Stating the obvious, the site is in a residential area, close to a school, leisure centre and medical facility. What possible need is there for 24 hours drinking!
What needs moderating in my email?
It seems to me that local residents have been ignored for too long, this is one application that simply cannot be allowed. As per Dick’s message – who makes the decision, if it’s the planning dept
( aka Flats R Us ) then heaven help us.
I live opposite the new store (as I am sure most regular readers of this site know by now), and had it not been for Chris knocking on my door last night, I would have been none the wiser (the notices are small).
This is typical behaviour of a large company not giving a monkeys about the local community, and out for earning that extra dollar (it’s an American company remember!!)
If this application goes through, and with our current council, I see no reason why they would dismiss it, the value of properties in the vacinity of the store will be adversly affected.
The people of Rayleigh and the surrounding villages have been consistently lied too by Asda, and it is about time we stood up and actually had our voices heard – the government have inflicted this blot on the landscape upon us, and perhaps they need to hear what they have done to us.
Hi Dick – your question about why we moderate emails is a very good one.
There’s a couple of reasons – first of all, in case somebody writes something libellous (which has happened once or twice) or deceptive (e.g. writing under somebody else’s name – this hasn’t happened yet).
Secondly, because about 90 percent of ‘comments’ we get are spam – messages with links to dodgy websites. As I understand it, the more links they can get on other peoples websites, the higher their Google ranking goes. If we left our comments unmoderated, we’d just be swamped.
Instead of worrying about selling drink 24hrs a day maybe someone somewhere should be thinking about a proper crossing across Rawreth Lane so all the drunks can cross safely.
No seriously i think a pelican crossing is a must along this very busy road which is set to get even busier .
Children have to cross from the new school and also Sweyne School they have only been back just over a week and one child has been involved in an accident already.
How many more before we get things which are needed and would make life better
for the residents or do we only get things we dont really want .
What we have to worry about with Asda now that they have got their approval for 24 hour opening and to sell drink, is that they wait for a while, until all the opposition is ‘old news’ and then start to extend their opening hours.
I have today received my invitation to attend the hearing for the licence application on the 16th October at 10am (if I can get the time off work, I will be in attendance).
I was interested to note that guidelines state:
‘Shops, stores and supermarkets should normally be free to provide sales of alcohol for consumption off the premises at any times when the retail outlet is open for shopping unless there are good reasons based on the licensing objectives for restricting those hours. For example a limitation may be appropriate following police representations in the case of some shops known to be a focus of disorder and disturbance because youths gather there’
I think that we could have them here – the Leisure Centre is a hive of activity after the leisure centre closes – youths are often hanging around the Centre until way past midnight – (as some of these are of school age, I often wonder if parents care what their offspring are up to or where they are at that hour, but this should be in a different thread!) I have also, on more than one occasion, been left with their litter outside of my house in the guise of beer bottles and cans.
I hope that this will be taken into consideration by the licensing committee, although if we win this one, Asda can appeal to Magistrates Court, and we all know the outcome then don’t we?
ANOTHER APPLICATION RE 24 HOUR LICENSE
On picking up the ASDA rubbish from my front garden I picked up a Licensing Notification re ASDA applying to be able to supply alcohol twenty four hours a day, seven days a week & to include the provision of late night refreshment from 2300 hours to 0500 hours the following morning seven days a week.
I’m not sure how many local residents are aware of this application. Any representations by interested parties must be received in writing by the Licensing Authority no later than 8th January 2009
Admin, can you shed any light on this, I havn’t seen or heard anything about this.
I’m preparing something right now – including what you wrote last time around….
just wondering, what does the status “licence surrendered” mean? Have noticed ASDA put in an application in September, and that is the current status? Does it mean that they currently have no licence to sell alcohol?
That’s a good question – I’ll try to find the answer tomorrow.
I suggest we leave future comments on today’s post (Dec 14th 2008)