The Blue Boar on Victoria Avenue wants to sell alcohol for delivery until 6am, and a Rayleigh Road petrol station has applied for 24-hour off-sales. Five applications are open, with deadlines from 1 to 24 September.
Five premises in Southend have live licence applications with the city council, and the first deadline for objections falls tomorrow.
The Blue Boar on Victoria Avenue has applied to extend its off-sales hours to 6am, to run an alcohol delivery service between 1am and 6am. Anyone who wants to object has until 1 September.
A fortnight later, Belgrave Service Station on Rayleigh Road in Eastwood is seeking permission to sell alcohol off the premises 24 hours a day. That deadline is 11 September.
All five are listed on the council’s own register of current applications (Southend-on-Sea City Council).
The five applications, and when you have to object by
| Premises | Ward | What is applied for | Objections by |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Blue Boar Public House, 177 Victoria Avenue | Victoria | Variation to extend off-sales to 06:00 daily, for a delivery-only service between 01:00 and 06:00 | 1 September |
| Entice, 3 Warrior House, 42 to 82 Southchurch Road | Milton | Renewal of a Sexual Entertainment Licence, 21:00 to 04:30 daily, unchanged from the existing licence | 7 September |
| Belgrave Service Station, 529 Rayleigh Road, Eastwood | Eastwood Park | Variation for the sale of alcohol off the premises 00:00 to 23:59, so 24 hours | 11 September |
| Fishnchickn Ltd, trading as Churchill’s Fish and Chips, 183 The Broadway, Thorpe Bay | Thorpe | New premises licence, alcohol on the premises 11:30 to 22:00 daily | 22 September |
| South Street Coffee House, 785 Southchurch Road | Southchurch | New premises licence, alcohol on and off the premises 10:00 to 22:00, recorded music indoors 07:00 to 22:00 | 24 September |
The council’s reference numbers are 26/01311/LAPREM for the Blue Boar, 26/01338/SEVCLB for Entice, 26/01355/LAPREM for Belgrave Service Station, 26/01383/LAPREM for Churchill’s and 26/01334/LAPREM for South Street Coffee House.
What the Blue Boar is actually asking for
This one is worth reading carefully, because the headline hours are not the whole application.
The pub is not asking to stay open until 6am. Its application says the premises “will not be open to the public during these hours, and there will be no on-sales after the existing permitted hours”. What it wants is to take telephone and online orders and deliver alcohol between 1am and 6am.
The application also sets out what the pub says it will do to control that:
- a Challenge 25 policy will continue to apply
- all delivery drivers will be trained in age verification
- photographic identification will be requested where appropriate
- alcohol will not be left unattended
- a refusals register and an incident log will be kept, and CCTV will keep running
Those commitments matter, because if the council grants the variation they can be written into the licence as conditions.
The rule most people miss: no objections means it must be granted
The council’s own wording is blunt. “If we do not get any objections to the applications then we must grant the application.” Only if objections are raised and not resolved does the Licensing Sub Committee sit and decide.
That is not the council being lax. It is how the Licensing Act 2003 works. A licensing authority cannot refuse an application nobody has objected to.
Three practical points if you are thinking of writing in.
1. There is a hard 28-day window. Representations must be in writing and received within 28 days beginning the day after the application was given to the council. The dates in the table above are those deadlines. Miss one and the application goes through on the papers.
2. Your objection has to be about one of four things. A representation must address at least one of the licensing objectives:
- the prevention of crime and disorder
- public nuisance
- public safety
- the protection of children from harm
“I do not want another off-licence” is not one of them. “Deliveries at 3am will wake this street” is public nuisance, and is.
3. Your name and address go to the applicant. This is the part that catches people out. Under the Licensing Act 2003 (Hearings) Regulations 2005 the council must give the applicant copies of any relevant representations in full, including personal data. The council says plainly that it “will not edit your letter of representation before it sends it out”, and that your letter goes into the sub-committee agenda and your personal data may appear in the published minutes. You still have to give a full postal address for the representation to be valid. Making a false statement in connection with an application can bring a fine of up to £5,000.
Representations go to licact2003@southend.gov.uk, or to the Licensing Authority, Southend-on-Sea City Council, Civic Centre floor 5, Victoria Avenue, Southend-on-Sea SS2 6ZG.
One of the five works differently
The Entice application is a renewal of a Sexual Entertainment Licence, which is made under the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982, not the Licensing Act 2003. The council says the objection process for it differs from the one above and publishes a separate guide on how to object to a sex establishment application. The hours applied for, 21:00 to 04:30 daily, are the same as the existing licence.
What it means for you
- If you live near Victoria Avenue, tomorrow is your last day to say anything about overnight alcohol deliveries from the Blue Boar.
- If you live near 529 Rayleigh Road in Eastwood, you have until 11 September on the 24-hour off-sales application. Rayleigh Road is also carrying the Cadent gas works closure at the A127 until 14 September, which we track on our Southend roadworks and travel page.
- Silence counts as consent. No representations means the council has no legal room to refuse.
- Write about noise, safety, crime or children, not about competition. An objection outside the four licensing objectives will not be treated as relevant.
- The full register of current and past applications is searchable on the council’s Public Access system, which also runs its planning applications.
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