Saturday, May 23, 2009

TowerHill success

Some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that our campaign to restrict opening hours at the new Clifton Cinema restaurant has been successful. Planners have refused permission for it to stay open, offering dancing and drink until 2.30am.

Throughout we've stressed we welcome the conversion of this historic cinema building and the investors that the Chinese businesspeople are putting into it. But opening in the early hours was too much and we had to resist it.

The bad news is that they have a right of appeal - and sometimes that can lead to things going pear-shaped.

For instance, close to this site, we were celebrating two years ago when permission was refused for a phone mast and base station outside the Co-op cinema. We were astonished and dismayed when this self-same structure was installed.

Upon inquiry, it emerged the phone company had quietly gone to a government inspector to appeal and won. Outrageous! The structure isn't as bad as we feared but our original arguments stand - that it's clutter in a shopping area which has just been renovated with new bus stops and public access.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yes really good news - thanks. We've now got an empty building with rubbish piling up against it and youths skate boarding around the steps. When the building eventually starts to fall down, perhaps you can then campaign to have this listed building demolished?