Council relent over ban on outside seating at Strand on the Green pubs

Punters sitting outside the Bell & Crown at Strand on the Green

Licensing officers offer stay of execution while pubs apply for licences

The Bell & Crown and The City Barge have now been told they can keep their tables and seating along the riverside at Strand on the Green.

Cabinet Member for licensing, Cllr Amy Croft, who represents the Chiswick Riverside ward, has had a meeting with the licensing officers and they have agreed they will not proceed with the enforcement of daily fines as long as the pubs have put in an application for a pavement licence to have outside furniture.

Both pubs were told to remove their outside furniture after licensing officers found they did not have licences following a request from local councillor Rick Rowe that their licences be checked.

The City Barge

“This last week has been so stressful”

The manager of The City Barge maintains they do not need a licence because they own the strip of land beside the pub. They have not applied for a licence and the matter is in the hands of their solicitors.

The general manager of the Bell & Crown put in a licence application the day the Council’s officer visited the pub and told her they needed one. Licensing is usually dealt with by Fuller’s head office.

Fiona Sparkes told The Chiswick Calendar:

“This last week has been so stressful. When Amy came and told me I got quite emotional. I just gave her a big hug”.

When the Council officer visited last Tuesday (23 June) he told her they had four days to remove the four tables, which each seat six people. He said they had to be removed by Monday 29 June or the Fuller’s pub would face daily fines.

Fiona Sparkes, general manager, outside the Bell & Crown

She told us they stood to lose thousands of pounds; staff would lose shifts and they risked customers who found they could not sit outside not coming back.

The pub turnover doubles in the summer, precisely because it is in a lovely position for people to sit outside and enjoy the view of the River Thames towards Kew Bridge.

“We have had loads of people contact us [since The Chiswick Calendar published the story on Tuesday] asking what they can do to help. We haven’t had one negative comment about the tables and chairs being outside.

“My main concern was trying to get the customers back in if we took the tables away. You can do a lot of damage in two weeks”, she said.

She had been told by the Council the minimum period in which they could fast track a licence application was 14 days. She asked for a stay of execution and was waiting for the Council officer to come back this week.

The Council has now said her application will be considered on 8 July and the outside furniture can remain in situ in the intervening period.

The Bull’s Head, Strand on the Green

Council U-turn

Initially the Council maintained they had to follow their usual protocol. When they find a business in breach of their licence they have to act on it, by law.

After Cllr Croft spoke to the head of the licensing department they decided it was possible to show a little leeway.

“Because of the slightly unusual way in which the Council were informed of potential breaches and the genuine good faith of the businesses involved the Council will make an exception on this occasion”, she told us.

The Bull’s Head are the only one of the three pubs which has a licence, so they were not told to remove their outside furniture, but they were told to remove shelves from the railings on the other side of the towpath from the pub, as were The City Barge.

They have both removed their shelves and taken away the seats that they had placed beside the railings.

It was when the Bull’s Head applied to renew their licence that Cllr Rick Rowe asked for Council officers to review it and also review the licences of the other two pubs. He told The Chiswick Calendar he had not intended for the Council to come down on them in such a heavy-handed way, saying the way they had responded was “ridiculous”.

He has been inundated with complaints from the public, even to the point where there has been a demonstration outside his house.