Premises License For Alcohol Consumption Secured for Historic England’s Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings Café, Shop and Dye House.

Berrys has secured two premises licenses for the consumption of alcohol on the newly restored Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings site.

This licence granted will apply to the Dye House from 8am-10pm Monday to Saturday and 8am-8pm on Sundays, and the shop from 10am-5pm seven days a week.

The other license permits the café to sell alcohol between the hours of 8am and 11pm, Monday to Sunday.

How We Approached The Project

The vision for this project was to ensure to choose the path of least resistance. Ensuring that what was applied for would be suitable for the venues and their locations.

The Flaxmill Maltings was built in 1797, the Grade I listed Main Mill is the world’s first multi-storey, cast iron-framed building. The strength that iron gave to the Main Mill was the innovative leap needed to allow buildings to be built taller and is now therefore described as “the grandparent of the modern skyscraper”. As a result of the international status of this site and the positive attitude Historic England hold, it was imperative to work with the Council on this and ensure the application was met with a positive result.

The Dye House specifically has little to no soundproofing and as such avoiding causing any public nuisance was a very sensitive subject in relation to noise pollution to the neighbours.

How We Achieved The Project

Berrys obtained the Premises Licenses on behalf of Historic England. The proposed times for alcohol to be consumed was carefully chosen as to get the desired result while not asking for too much, therefore, carefully balancing the risk against the reward. This was specifically advised on by Berrys.

Berrys liaised specifically with the architects to ensure the architectural plans complied with licensing requirements and completed the technical application forms to then submit to Shropshire Council licensing team.

Once submitted to the licensing team, the public have 28 days to make a representation, if any representation does not want to compromise or come to agreements with the applicant then they reserve the right to be heard at a hearing. Further to this the Responsible Authorities (Licensing Department, Police, Fire and Rescue, Environmental Health, Local Planning Authority, Case Management Team, Home Office, Trading Standards and the Director of Public Health for Shropshire) are consulted on within this period.

Within the 28-day consultation period only two of the Responsible Authorities wished to have additional conditions than what Berrys submitted these were regarding the CCTV from the police and certain signage in relation to protection of Children from harm for Trading Standards. These conditions were accepted.

Three Representations from the public were made in the consultation period these were long representations which did not want it to go ahead and as such the process had to be taken to a hearing.

Alex Bruce, a member of our team represented Historic England at two hearings to get this application permitted. The hearings included Alex being cross-examined by the Licensing Act Sub-Committee about the functioning of the venues and how Historic England would suitably deal with the prevention of crime and disorder, public safety, the prevention of public nuisance and the protection of children from harm in an effective way. Alex addressed the three representations and discarded much of their comments in an effective way rendering them void, and suitably addressing the three main points which were relevant, this was crime, noise and loitering.

The hearing proceedings were dealt with effectively and Berrys won for both, and the licenses were permitted.

This is now a great opportunity for Historic England to serve alcohol and therefore, hold more events at the Dye House as well as serving locally sourced beers in the shop and café.