Late openings for fast food shops refused
TWO FAST food outlets in Lerwick town centre have seen applications to extend their opening hours at weekends from 3am to 4am rejected.
Shetland Islands Council’s licensing board turned down the bids from Harbour Fish & Chip Shop and Tatties & Point after receiving objections from Police Scotland and the local authority’s environmental health department.
Both premises had been seeking permission to open from 11pm until 4am on Fridays and Saturdays, on 2 January and on the Lerwick Up Helly Aa hop night.
The move was spurred by a previous decision to allow Lerwick’s nightclubs to extend their opening until 3am rather than 2am.
The local police force objected due to concerns about antisocial behaviour and disorder and the need for extra officers at its “most resource intensive” time of the week.
The licensing board initially recommended refusal in April but delayed taking a decision until Tuesday’s meeting while the full council reviewed its overall policy.
A letter to the licensing board from Shetland area commander Eddie Graham said there was no objection to the current closing time of 3am, the same as the new curfew for the town’s nightclubs.
However he felt extending the opening hours to 4am would “significantly reduce the service to the wider community whilst crowds around catering establishments are marshalled by police to prevent disorder”.
While the Harbour Fish and Chip Shop had “less disorder” than other late-opening caterers, and was seeking to cater for people coming out of nightclubs, Graham said that if permission was granted only to that outlet “there may not be parity with other premises”.
“The net effect on the policing of Shetland as a whole during this golden hour [between 3am and 4am] will be to significantly reduce the service to the wider community whilst crowds around catering establishments are marshalled by the police to prevent disorder,” he wrote.
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Yasmin Rasul, who has run the chip shop for the past four years, spoke on BBC Radio Shetland about her frustration at the decision.
She said people drinking alcohol and not eating food was the primary cause of antisocial behaviour.
When nightclubs shut at 2am, Rasul said, the queue of folk seeking food before heading home built up between 2am and 3am.
But now the hours have changed, the authorities are “now expecting them to leave [a club] ten minutes early to come to the chip shop and get their food – why can they not allow these places to be open later?”
Rasul described a suggestion from board member Malcolm Bell of shutting food outlets at 2am as “totally outrageous”. She said most of the people served in the chip shop were “decent people who want to enjoy a good night out, come in, get a fish supper and go home”.
Licensing board chairman George Smith said the decision was taken after full consultation with police, whereas there had been no objection to the extension of nightclub opening hours.
But he conceded that having the food outlets shut at the same time as clubs “could be an issue” and said it was “something the board, in the fullness of time, might want to have another look at”.
Smith added that he understood Rasul’s concern at the possibility of reducing opening hours to 2am. But “equally councillor Bell’s suggestion is fairly common practice across Scotland”.
“We are one of the few areas where we do have closures at the same time,” he said. “In the north division of Police Scotland most food outlets will close before licensed premises such as nightclubs close.”
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