{"id":962938,"date":"2026-05-16T03:28:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T03:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/962938\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T03:28:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T03:28:19","slug":"pepes-piri-piri-in-musselburgh-denied-late-licence-after-17-police-call-outs-in-one-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/962938\/","title":{"rendered":"Pepe’s Piri Piri in Musselburgh denied late licence after 17 police call outs in one year"},"content":{"rendered":"

An East Lothian chicken shop\u00a0has been denied a late licence after police were called out 17 times in the past year. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Pepe\u2019s Piri Piri\u00a0on Musselburgh\u2019s High Street applied to East Lothian Council to extend its trading hours to midnight through the week and 1am on a Friday and Saturday.<\/p>\n

Having heard evidence of\u00a0anti-social behaviour and disturbances including multiple police calls in the last year, councillors\u00a0agreed that public safety would not be served by extending hours.<\/p>\n

An agent for the\u00a0owner of the franchise, Atif Ali, said the number of police calls was evidence of how seriously management took\u00a0public and staff safety.<\/p>\n

The agent\u00a0offered\u00a0to accept a licence\u00a0extension for a shorter period than the normal two-year licence, to monitor behaviour.<\/p>\n

He added that his client\u00a0was not minded to comply with a police request for trained door security at the venue because of the high costs, but would do so if need was shown.<\/p>\n

The agent pointed out that there had been no trouble at the High Street business since March, and added that there had been no public objections to the application.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A police officer told a meeting of the council\u2019s Licensing Sub Committee there had been 17 calls relating to youth anti-social behaviour in the\u00a0last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin\u00a0these 17 calls, there\u2019s been theft and assault of a member of the public outside the store. I\u2019m not saying that\u2019s the store\u2019s fault, that could be linked to the demographic attracted.\u201d<\/p>\n

The officer added: \u201cThere\u2019s been an assault on staff and vandalism to the store\u00a0and a lot of issues with youths creating a nuisance to staff and then refusing to leave the store.\u201d<\/p>\n

Councillor Lee-Anne Menzies told Mr Ali,\u00a0who attended the meeting with his agent: \u201cI feel for you and your staff. I\u2019ve witnessed a couple of concerns in the High Street, and it\u2019s not just at your store and\u00a0against your staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe the late opening of this or any fast food takeaway is going to add to the benefit of the people of Musselburgh,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Staying open to 1am would just \u201ckick the issues two hours down the line\u201d when police have even fewer resources with the pubs emptying out, said Councillor Menzies.<\/p>\n

She added that she understood that trained security staff would not be cheap but added: \u201cPolice time is not cheap either. For all of these reasons, because of the demographic that uses Pepe\u2019s and other fast food takeaways, it is going to attract the very people that are problematic. I cannot accept the application even for a short term.\u201d<\/p>\n

Provost John McMillan, chairing the cub committee, referred to the cumulative evidence of police calls and said: \u201cI think if we had evidence longer than March it would have helped.\u00a0I do hope that behaviour in Musselburgh High Street will change.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think, given the situation and I know the feelings of many residents and all of the councillors, I find it difficult to support\u00a0this even as an experiment, so I too would not vote to grant at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"WhatsApp<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An East Lothian chicken shop\u00a0has been denied a late licence after police were called out 17 times in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":962939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-962938","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-edinburgh","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=962938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/962938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/962939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=962938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=962938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=962938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}