THE Bakers Arms on Alton High Street has been granted permission under the Highways Act 1980 to install two tables, eight chairs and a barrier on the pavement outside the pub, provided they are not in place before 10am and are removed from the highway by 10pm.

During a hearing into the application, conducted by East Hampshire District Council’s (EHDC) licensing sub-committee, Bakers Arms licensee Adam Neller pointed out that while the previous wooden picnic benches had been on the highway permanently, enabling people to sit there until the early hours of the morning, during “a time in which trouble had historically occurred”, the new proposal to remove the tables and chairs by 10pm would ensure that this would no longer happen.

Furthermore, the barriers would better define the seating area and the provision of ashtrays would help minimise the risk of cigarette butts littering the pavement.

Colin Pearce, area manager for Punch Taverns, further reinforced the fact that the proposed tables and chairs would be of lightweight aluminium to make night-time removal easier.

However, a neighbouring resident expressed concerns over the problems she had encountered with noise and cigarette smoke in her flat. Since the only windows in the property overlooked the High Street and were only single glazed due to the property being listed, when the tables and chairs were in use outside the pub she could clearly hear conversations, even with the windows closed, and these conversations were often inappropriate for her children to hear.

Furthermore, her flat quickly filled with cigarette smoke from smokers outside the premises if the windows were open.

On occasion, she said, fights would occur outside the premises and people had often sat on the picnic benches into the early hours of the morning.

She had lived in the flat for the past six years and explained how much better the situation had been since the previous picnic tables had been removed.

When asked, the resident said that she had not made any formal complaint about the problem because she was a tolerant person, but she had now “had enough”.

EHDC’s environmental protection team had made a representation requesting conditions following noise complaints which both Mr Pearce and the neighbour had confirmed they were satisfied with.

These included the time restriction, from 10am to 10pm, outside of which the tables and chairs would not be there, the fact that no more than two tables and eight chairs shall be on the highway at any one time, and that no external heaters are to be provided.

Before the installation can go ahead, the district council has requested the submission of a noise management plan outlining how the noise is to be controlled and monitored.