\n Pepe\u2019s Piri Piri\u00a0 on Musselburgh High Street applied to East Lothian Council to extend its trading hours to midnight through the week and 1am on a Friday and Saturday.\n<\/p>\n
\n But having heard evidence of anti-social behaviour and disturbances, including 17 police calls in the last year, councillors\u00a0agreed that public safety would not be served by extending\u00a0 hours.\n<\/p>\n
\n An agent for the\u00a0owner of the franchise, Atif Ali, said that the number of police calls was evidence of how seriously the management took\u00a0public and staff safety.\n<\/p>\n
\n The agent offered to accept a licence\u00a0extension to hours for a shorter period than the normal two-year\u00a0licence so as to monitor behaviour.\n<\/p>\n
\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.\n<\/p>\n
\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\n<\/p>\n
\n A police officer told a meeting of the council\u2019s licensing sub committee on Thursday that there had been 17 calls relating to youth anti-social behaviour in the\u00a0last year.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWithin these 17 calls, there\u2019s been theft and assault of a member of the public outside the store,” the said.\n<\/p>\n
\n “I\u2019m not saying that\u2019s the store\u2019s fault, that could be linked to the demographic attracted.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n The officer added: \u201cThere\u2019s been an assault on staff and vandalism to the store,\u00a0 and a lot of issues with youths creating a nuisance to staff and then refusing to leave the store.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Councillor Lee-Anne Menzies told Mr Ali, who attended the meeting with his agent: \u201cI feel for you and your staff.\n<\/p>\n
\n “I\u2019ve witnessed a couple of concerns in the High Street, and it\u2019s not just at your store and against your staff.”\n<\/p>\n
\n But she added: \u201cI don\u2019t believe the late opening of this or any\u00a0fast-food takeaway\u00a0is going to add to the benefit of the people of Musselburgh.”\n<\/p>\n
\n Staying open to 1am would just \u201ckick the issues two hours down the line\u201d, when police had even fewer resources with the pubs emptying out, said Ms Menzies.\n<\/p>\n
\n She added that she understood that trained security staff would not be cheap, but added: \u201cPolice time is not cheap either.\n<\/p>\n
\n “For all of these reasons, because of the demographic that uses Pepe\u2019s and other\u00a0 fast-food takeaways, it is going to attract the very people that are problematic.\n<\/p>\n
\n “I cannot\u00a0accept the application, even for a short term.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n Provost John McMillan, chairing the committee, referred to the cumulative evidence of police calls and said: \u201cI think if we had evidence longer than March, it would have helped.\n<\/p>\n
\n “I do hope that behaviour in Musselburgh High Street will change.\n<\/p>\n
\n “I think, given the situation, and I know the feelings of many residents and all of the councillors, I find it difficult to support this even as an experiment, so\u00a0I too would not vote to grant at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pepe\u2019s Piri Piri\u00a0 on Musselburgh High Street applied to East Lothian Council to extend its trading hours to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":965468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-965467","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":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116586869313000545","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965467","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=965467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/965467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/965468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=965467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=965467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=965467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}