Restaurant ‘faces ruin’ as shisha pipe area falls foul of planners

A RESTAURATEUR has claimed his business could be ruined and staff made redundant if he is forced to close a popular shisha pipe-smoking area.

Osama Oukasha has run Sheikh’s Lebanese restaurant in Glossop Road, Sheffield, for more than a year and, six months ago, introduced an outside area where diners can smoke Arabic-style water pipes.

Shisha smoking dates back hundreds of years and is part of traditional Arabic culture, with friends usually sharing a water pipe containing flavoured tobacco after meals.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

At Sheikh’s, the covered outside area is popular with doctors and foreign students, who can also watch Arabic television stations while they share a pipe.

However, city planners have advised councillors to close down Mr Oukasha’s “unauthorised shisha smoking area” when they consider the case at a meeting next Monday.

They say that using the smoking area until 11pm seven days a week would “give rise to unacceptable noise and disturbance” due to “noise breakout”.

But Mr Oukasha said: “The area has been popular and has helped my business.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

People come in and go outside to chill out, relax and have a smoke.

“It’s like a meeting place for our community and for foreign students from all different nationalities who like to sit down, talk to each other and watch Arabic movies, news and football.

“With the recession it’s been very hard, but this does help my business. We get academic people, doctors and nurses are mainly my clients.”

He added that people can choose to eat inside the restaurant and go to the smoking area afterwards, or else take their food outside.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Mr Oukasha said: “The new shelter we’ve proposed is 50 per cent open and fits in with smoking regulations.

“We’re really suffering at the moment and if we close down five people will be made unemployed. The shisha area is the only way we can survive in the recession.”

Green Party councillor Jillian Creasy is backing Mr Oukasha’s plans, which involve building a new wooden shisha-smoking area to be used between noon and 11pm seven days a week.

At present, the shelter at Sheikh’s does not have planning permission and councillors could decide to take enforcement action to have it dismantled.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Coun Creasy said: “It is appropriate for a restaurant to have smoking areas which serve Middle Eastern people, both long-term residents and university students, for whom smoking shisha is a normal way to relax after a meal.

“Unlike smoking outside pubs, there is no drinking or loud music, just conversation or watching Arabic television programmes.

“The design of the smoking shelter complies with the smoking legislation and is in keeping with other extensions in adjoining back yards.”

City planners, however, have said that while the proposed new smoking shelter would comply with the smoking ban, it would “not provide any form of noise containment”.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

In the report set to go before councillors at Monday’s meeting, the planners said: “Owing to the shelter’s design, which has to incorporate open sides to comply with the smoking shelter legislation and a lightweight roof due to its timber construction, it would not provide any form of noise containment.

“The noise generated is considered to detrimentally affect the amenity of adjoining residents.

“It is recommended that planning permission is refused and enforcement action authorised to seek the removal of the unauthorised smoking shelter and cessation of the unauthorised shisha smoking area.”