'Public urinate up our fences' - Yorkshire nursery objects to drinks licence for restaurant next door

Oak Valley Day Nursery and Sheffield Children’s Safeguarding Partnership have both objected to plans to extend drinking hours of Thai restaurant AuthenThai in the Container Suite at Century Park, Halfway.

Licence holder Lee Dibble has applied to serve alcohol from noon to 11pm each day and 2am on New Year’s Day. Opening hours would be extended to 11.30pm from 9pm and the venue wants to be allowed to make off sales.

Currently, AuthenThai is allowed to sell alcohol from 4pm to 9pm Tuesday to Thursday, noon to 9pm on Friday and 3pm to 9pm at weekends. The licence was granted last September.

Sheffield City Council’s licensing sub-committee will hear from the venue and objectors and decide about the application next Wednesday (April 15).

An objection from the nursery states: “Safeguarding was and still is a massive concern for us at Oak Valley Day Nursery, especially as we share the same car park where entrance is gained to both Mr Dibble and ourselves.

“Since his previous application was granted we have witnessed members of the public urinating up our fences in public and therefore potentially exposing themselves to children and staff. Erratic driving in the car park, which will only set to increase should alcohol be freely available.

“Our play areas still continue to be used by his patrons with children, on occasion, so that we have to do a full garden check each day.

“Our biggest concern is the car park we share. We had accepted that we could make adjustments to mitigate some of our safeguarding concerns previously, as to how we operate our day with the children to enable Mr Dibble to have his alcohol licence.

“This included preventing the children accessing outside areas and having to cross the car park to get to our play area after 4pm.

“However, we cannot keep the children inside from 12pm onwards as this goes against the delivery of the Early Years Foundation Stage that we are bound to deliver as part of our registration with Ofsted.”

The safeguarding partnership has objected because the extended hours would remove restrictions on serving alcohol when children are in the nursery.

A local resident’s objection stated that the venue is already noisy, adding: “This will have a really negative impact on any peace and quiet I may hope to get if this is allowed to go ahead.

“It will also make me feel very unsafe having to walk into the area full of drinkers.”