Pub's patio heater victory
11 February, 2009
Council sees decision overturned and says applications should not get refused in future
A licensee has won a battle to keep her patio heaters after a council originally rejected a planning application on environmental grounds.
Lara Read, licensee of the Heart and Hand, in Brighton, will be allowed to keep her three outdoor heaters – which cost £1,000 – after a government planning inspector overruled the council.
And Brighton and Hove City Council has today said it welcomes the “clarification” and is not “expecting to refuse these types of applications in the future”.
It originally rejected the planning application, arguing the heaters did not conform with its policy for energy-efficient buildings and looked unsightly in a conservation area.
However after an appeal, government planning inspector Simon Emerson overturned the decision, saying it could threaten pub businesses.
He said there was “no more efficient way of keeping people warm outside”.
“I do give some weight to the need for a business such as this to attract and retain customers,” he added.
“On balance I consider that the proposal does not represent an inappropriately wasteful or inefficient use of energy.”
Lara told The Publican: “It’s fantastic news. Most of my customers are smokers so they’re over the moon.
“We’re running a business here and you need these heaters because it gets so cold in Brighton.”
A spokesman for Brighton & Hove City Council said: “The policy we used as a basis to refuse the application deals with the need for energy efficiency in all sorts of developments. We felt that outside heaters were inefficient and therefore conflicted with this policy.
“However, we are happy to accept the decision of the Inspector as it provided us with some useful clarification and, as a result, we are not expecting to refuse these types of application in principle in the future.”
Readers' comments
Well said "Ken Nason" and well said "DD" However, "Matthew Chell" every vehicle on the planet produces around a thousand times more gas's, chemicals, toxins etc than a patio heater, by the time the heat from a patio heater has travelled about twenty feet into the air, it has already cooled down. This whole "anti-patio heater thing" was concucted by the "stop everyone from smoking brigade" immediately after the smoking ban was implimented. These people did not realise until the very last minute that not all smokers would stop going to the pub, as planned, but would actually stand outside smoking and looking "threatening" it was a last ditch effort to rid the planet of the evil smokers who annoy them so much. it has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect, it is the mouth of the "mouthy minority" who have been ruining this country for us all, with their ridiculous and extremist oppinions and views. frankly, if all you have to worry about is people smoking or greenhouse gas's, then you are a very lucky man !
After helping to destroy our pubs, the Government now want to help them. If they really want to help pubs, then allow publicans to choose to have smokers back inside or not.
The pubs wouldn't need these stupid patio heaters if the smokers didn't have to stand outside in the freezing weather. Nobody I know would be thick enough to go and stand outside a pub for a pint and a cigarette, Patio heater or not. Does the pub trade think that smokers are second class citizens ? They made up 80% of the drinkers in pubs before the ban and will not return to the pubs in any number until this spiteful ban is amended.
During the middle ages they used religion and the fear of eternal damnation to ensure complaince with the doctrine of obedience and servitude to the cause. Now i the 21st Century we have "global warming" slowly creeping towards "climate change" to do exactly the same thing. Co2 is the new devil whom you shal reject with all of your might otherwise you will be branded a heratic. Personally I can't wait for sea level to rise as I will have a beach front property, living on a hill.Ken Nason
Matthew - what a ridiculous and naive statement. Presumably you would also take issue with those who drive to the pubs, and who, by doing so, produce totally unnecessary vehicle emissions? Besides which, I think you will find that the CO2 produced by patio heaters is immeasurably small. Do you also have a problem with under pitch heating on football pitches or energy wasted freeing ice rinks, or unnecessary flights to sunny foreign climes? You use the term climate change instead of global warming. Correct...the world is actually cooling...
The changing climate means that you'll soon be much more worried about awnings and air-conditioning that patio heaters, and if we don't reduce our greenhouse gas emissions radically over the next decade, then no-one will be going to English pubs by the end of the century because the humans that are left will be living in places like Siberia and Canada. You and I won't be alive then, but we owe to future generations at least the chance to survive. When I go to a pub, I complain about patio heaters. Not only are they heating the atmosphere directly, they are a terrible example to the customers of how to behave.
This is a triumph for common sense over brighton council, for the last two decades brighton council(along with all councils in the UK) have tried to make us all "European" they have ignored tha fact that we are a sub-arctic island, it is freezing cold here for about 10 that most have been forced out of business by the smoking ban and months per year, it is obviously stupid to keep harrassing pubs, now the stupidity of local authorities to enforce legislation that is ignored all over the rest of Europe, Is this recognition of the crisis the pub trade has been forced into ? or is it just one planning officer who chose to go against the flow of council arrogance ? if it is the latter, no doubt he will pay with his job, for being so disobedient and standing up against our "nanny State"