July 9th 2007 - meeting minutes

Loaves and Fishes sculpture by John Skelton, Brighthelm Church and Community Centre

How to complain about pub noise

Attendance

21 people  

Apologies

Margaret Daly, Kevin Daly, Cllr Ian Davey, Peter Stocker, Bruce Smith, Peter Horslaugh

Minutes and matters arising

The minutes were agreed. Postcard sales have raised £110.50 to date and a list of outlets will appear in the next issue of the Runner. A cheque for £424 representing proceeds from the North Laine benefit CD has been received. The meeting thanked all those who had helped in these fundraising efforts.

Group reports

Runner: Gabrielle informed the meeting that she will be moving to Hove when she has sold her North Laine house. The meeting expressed their huge thanks and very best wishes to Gabrielle for the immense amount of work she has put into the NLCA over many years. The meeting went on to discuss who could take on Gabrielle's role as Runner distribution coordinator. Ruth Goodall (Tidy Street) kindly volunteered to take on this role.

Licensing: Roy Skam provided an update on how to complain about loud noise from licensed premises. In the first instance an approach to the licensee may work. If that doesn't help, contact B&H Council's licensing department, who will send someone to talk to the licensee - and one member reported that this had been very effective in her case. If this doesn't work, note all the details, perhaps get some more neighbours to join in, and write to the B&H licensing panel. If the panel considers there is a case to answer a hearing will be arranged within 28 days. If this doesn't work the last resort is an appeal to the magistrate court, but this will cost £400, and you may be liable to pay all costs if you lose. Roy offered informal telephone advice to any members who face problems with noisy licensed premises.

Theatre Group:  The next theatre visit will be to see Oleana on Thursday 22nd September.

Social and fundraising:  The Pokeno Café in Gardner Street is hosting a wine tasting evening to raise funds for the NLCA on Thursday 11th October.

Environment and planning

• Southern Water will be carrying out major works in Tidy Street, Kensington Gardens and Over Street in the next few months. We can all expect major disruption. Elly Hargreave reported that SW were very helpful when working near her house, despite cutting the water off.

• Planning applications: we agreed to apply our standard rules to all the cases presented. Gabrielle's role, which will fall vacant, was discussed, and Sandy Crowhurst kindly volunteered to take this over.

• Pym's Gardens alley: has been gated by the developers, but this was done without an appropriate gating order. The meeting heard from K-V of the Brighton Buddhist Centre, who reported that the alley had a history of drug taking, fly tipping and other antisocial behaviour. He said that things were much better in the alley now that the gates were up, although the problems have shifted to around Orange Row. The meeting discussed whether a gating order should be supported and was generally sympathetic. However, reservations were raised about the style of the gates, noted that this could be a significant precedent, that moving the problem on somewhere else doesn't solve the problem, and raised concerns about the way that the gates were erected originally by the developers. In the meantime, B&H Council will allow the gates to remain in situ.

• Post Office closure in Ship Street: The meeting, in response to a letter from David Lepper MP, agreed to support opposition to the relocation of the Ship Street Post Office to W H Smiths in Churchill Square.

Talk

The meeting then enjoyed an illustrated talk from Francis Clark-Lowes on his experiences of walking from Watford to Cairo.