Is it a café or a pub?

Sussex Police has accused the operator of number 2 Church Street in Brighton of “pushing at the limits” of his licencing conditions covering the sale of alcohol at the venue. In addition a representative of the North Laine Community Association has called the café, which has no kitchen, “a pub by stealth”.

The situation came to light after Joshua Theed applied to extend the hours on the venue’s drinks licence.  Its existing licence allows alcohol sales from 08:00 to 21:00 from Monday to Thursday, 08:00 to 22:00 on Friday and Saturday and 09:00 to 18:00 on Sundays.

The application asked to extend the hours from 08:00 to 23:00 every day and to serve drinks until 01:00 on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. This would effectively breach the council’s licensing policy but it isn’t clear if Mr Theed was aware of this at the time.

Sussex Police licensing officer Mark Thorogood told the panel of councillors at the licensing meeting that the venue only just complied with its café licence. This required substantial food to be available at all times but the menu only listed seven items of food accompanied by five pages of drinks.

The venue has had a licence to sell alcohol since 2017 when it was an Italian deli but Mr Theed has refitted the premises since then and police are concerned that it now appeared to be branded as a wine and cocktail bar.