This meeting of Plymouth Council's Licensing Committee was scheduled to receive two reports: one on Street Trading and one on the use of mediation in licensing applications. It also included the minutes of two previous meetings.

Review of Club Inferno

A Licensing Sub Committee was held on 4 November 2024 to review the Premises Licence of Club Inferno, a nightclub at 24 Lockyer Street. The review was requested by Plymouth City Council's Environmental Health Services as a result of noise complaints from nearby residents. The Sub Committee's report was included in the Licensing Committee's meeting pack for noting.

The report included details of noise complaints dating back to April 2023. Environmental Health Services told the Sub Committee that these had initially been dealt with through informal steps, before escalating to formal action, including the previous review.

The Sub Committee heard from three local residents about the impact the noise was having on their lives. One resident stated that The noise was having a detrimental and ‘extraordinary’ impact on the resident, their husband and their whole family, including their children and grandchildren. The lack of sleep made it difficult to function and the resident was upset and anxious.

Devon and Cornwall Police also provided a report, which highlighted incidents where they had been called to the club, and raised concerns about the management of the venue.

The Licence holder, Mr Motjaba Nabavi, was represented at the meeting, and provided information about the steps that Club Inferno had taken to try to reduce noise levels. This included moving the speakers and testing the sound (some speakers were moved before the last hearing and another set after 8 September 2024), doing what they could to reduce guests outside including putting up signage to make sure customers did not affect local residents, ensuring the streets around the club were clean upon closing, ensuring staff fully understood the rules, providing sound proofing (there had been no noise complaints from the resident above Club Inferno as a result), changing the entrance so that customers went out the back and, undertaking checks on the door for customers who may have drunk too much

However, having considered all the representations, the Sub-Committee concluded that:

The only way to prevent the Public Nuisance Licensing Objective from being undermined in this case was to revoke Club Inferno’s Licence.

Annual Street Trading Report 2025 / 2026

This report concerned the Street Trading consents issued by the council. The report outlined that the council was seeking to maximise its income from these consents whilst the city centre is undergoing redevelopment .

The report proposed renewing the consent dates and consent fees for 2025/2026 for existing traders in the city centre, on Plymouth Hoe and along Madeira Road. It also proposed delegating the authority to approve new street trading consent applications and set fees for ad hoc street trading applications to the Service Director for Economic Development.

It was proposed that consent fees would be held at 2024/2025 rates in the city centre in order to support street traders being able to continue to trade , but would be increased for ice cream traders by 2%.

The report justified not increasing fees for city centre traders, stating that:

2024/2025 has been another challenging year for all street traders with increases in energy and running costs, the disruption from the public realm building works, the adverse publicity surrounding the riots in August 2024 and lower customer footfall and spend all coinciding.

The report outlined the procedure for allocating pitches to traders, noting that existing consent holders would be given priority for the reallocation of their pitches.

Mediation Report

This report provided information to the committee about the use of mediation in determining licensing applications. The report stated that since 2005:

Some of these applications have received representations from responsible authorities or other parties and have been mediated out by agreement with both the applicant and the respective responsible authority without the need to bring the applications before the committee for determination.

The report then provided a list of the applications that had been received and subsequently resolved in this way, without providing any further information about the nature of the applications or the mediation process. The list included applications from:

• Bar Koda
• Café and Bistro Tio Leo
• Chaddlewood Farm Comm. Centre
• Fever and Boutique
• Giga’s
• The Green Taverners Mayflower Quarter Marquee
• MacPherson Motorcycles
• Mayflower Quarter Fan Park
• Octagon Brewery
• Olive and Twist
• Plymouth Cricket Club
• St Levan Inn
• The Funky Panda
• The Ship
• Vault72