Chicken Out!
Objectors Unite Against More Fast Food on Queens Road
HUGH SULLIVAN
Plans to turn former shop premises at 120-122 Queens Road (opposite the Brewing Brothers’ pub, the Imperial) into a major grilled chicken restaurant and takeaway have been met with a large volume of objections.
A formal planning application has been lodged with Hastings Borough Council with a view to installing a franchise of the nationwide brand Pepe’s Piri Piri. There are over 200 outlets already trading across Britain under this name, including in Maidstone, Tunbridge Wells and Brighton.
The proponents’ Design and Access Statement filed with the application describes the intended development as aiming to serve “healthy grilled chicken” as a “family friendly dining experience” with 44 customer seats, 15 full-time and five part-time staff. Opening hours would be 11am to 2am seven days a week (eating in until midnight, then another two hours for deliveries out). Takeaways are envisaged as “around 10% of the main business.”
A combination of neighbouring businesses and local residents oppose the plans. They are concerned that the particular premises, besides being in a flood risk area, have inadequate drainage, waste disposal facilities or vehicle parking/loading space to sustain a major restaurant; but, more fundamentally, they regard the 10% figure for the likely proportion of takeaway business as a complete fiction.
They are also taken aback by the formal response filed by the Highways department of East Sussex County Council: “Because the site is located in a controlled parking zone, has an existing use, and is in a central location with good links to public transport, an objection based on the absence of parking could not be justified”.
TAKEAWAY CULTURE
A stroll up Queens Road from Priory Meadow to Morrison’s takes you past a mix of nail bars, hairdressers, tailors, charity shops, small ethnic food shops and a multiplicity of small fast-food outlets – the Oriental Food Express, Erol’s Kebab, the Balti Hut, King Kebab, Ezra’s Chippy, the Muktha Tandoori, the Oregano Leaf pizzeria. Parking is permitted after 6pm along short stretches on the right-hand side between pedestrian crossings. But, notwithstanding the traffic signs prohibiting parking at any time on the verge or footway, these outlets attract a succession of customer and delivery vehicles clogging the roadside most evenings.
The road then bends, beyond Morrison’s petrol pumps on the left hand side and the Fountain pub on the right, and double yellow lines prohibit parking at any time on either side. Even if future restaurant customers might be willing to park further afield and walk to their dining experience, that seems unlikely to apply to the takeaway element of the prospective business.
“This is a quiet and semi-residential end of Queens Road, and the arrival of such a late-night food establishment would be both inappropriate and extremely detrimental to the lives and health of local residents,” declares Alan Marshall, who is leaseholder of a flat above the premises.
He says he has researched similar Pepe’s Piri Piri franchises elsewhere and found many complaints in local press or online concerning late night noise, parking issues and other environmental degradation. The one in Reading, converted from a former betting shop in 2019, has led, he claims, to “six years of constant major problems for local residents – smell, rubbish, late night noise, and rat infestation.”
Renee Lavin, owner of the next-door hairdressing salon, Yard and Quarter, also maintains that the top end of Queens Road is the wrong location for a late-operating restaurant, takeaway and food delivery hub. “I’m not saying, don’t come to Hastings,” she says. “But this isn’t the right area.”
Public consultation on the planning application ref HS/FA/00319 ended last month. It will presumably be heard in due course by Hastings Borough Council’s planning committee.
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