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A BUSINESS owner’s plan to expand alcohol sales into a garden area to allow him to keep better control of customers’ drinking have been approved.
Currently, customers can take their own drinks to Vero Gusto’s “shisha garden” in St James’s Street, Brighton, because the licence to sell alcohol covers the shop and café area only.
Premises licence holder Ishag Salama said he would have more control over managing people’s drinking with the extended licence – with customers able to buy drink only with a meal.
The garden, where people can smoke flavoured tobacco through hookah water pipes, is reached by an alleyway two doors up from the main business.
Sussex Police were concerned the venue was moving away from being a licensed restaurant and asked a Brighton and Hove City Council licensing panel to settle the matter.
St James’s Street is in an area where the council regulates new licences more tightly as part of a drive to reduce drink-related crime.
Council policy does allow for new restaurants in the area, as long as alcohol is served with food.
Mr Salama said he wanted to encourage people to eat at his premises.
The panel, made up of three councillors, said: “Overall, the panel considers that the licensing objectives will be better promoted by allowing the variation application to ensure better control of the outside area.
“The area will be covered by a restaurant condition.”
Vero Gusto has security cameras in the garden area as well as inside the premises and pledged to have staff monitoring the area at all times as required by the new licence.
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