Call to curb late night drinking in Shrewsbury

Shrewsbury Town Council wants to meet licensing officials from Shropshire Council to discuss ways of "limiting the spread of the night time economy", according to Councillor Andrew Bannerman, who represents the Quarry and Coton Hill ward on both councils.

The town council's planning committee said it wanted more information on applications from three bars looking to extend their opening hours.

The committee has written to Shropshire Council requesting: "When premises licences come up for renewal, members would like to see conditions imposed whereby no admission and no alcohol sales are allowed after 2am and premises are closed by 3am."

Councillor Andrew Bannerman said he had received a number of complaints from residents about late night drinking.

He said he believed that Shrewsbury's residents had already made efforts to compromise over late night drinking.

He said: "It has come to the fore again. We had a series of problems last year and into this year with premises which were causing residents nuisance – mainly through noise, but also through other bits of anti-social behaviour.

"It was becoming clear in the hearings for those premises that there is a school of thought that is that you can open as late as you like because that is when people want to go out drinking.

"The problem with that is obvious. If you have a town with a mixture of residents and businesses you have to have a bit of give and take and I think the problem we have, over the last few years, is it has been give, give, give by the residents, and take, take, take by the late night economy."

He said: "There is a direct correlation between the number of premises and the number of people on the streets and the amount of problems and nuisance."