THE LOUNGE BAR IS OUR NIGHTMARE ON SHIP STREET: NO MORE 5AM

We, the residents of Ship Street, Ship Street Gardens and Middle Street in Brighton hereby petition Brighton and Hove City Council to urgently review the licence of The Lounge Bar, 14 Ship Street, Brighton BN1 1AD.

The bar is currently allowed to open until 5am at weekends resulting in large, noisy and intimidating crowds gathering every weekend outside the venue on Ship Street from midnight until the bar closes at 5am. The bar also hosts regular club nights with live DJs playing loud dance music which is often audible around the neighbourhood in the early hours of the morning. The Lounge Bar's late opening time together with its policy of not charging an entry fee at any time is causing a direct impact on the quality of our lives as the 'word spreds' about cheap drink deals and free entry all night. The bar's popularity appears to increase week on week mainly between the hours of 1am and 5am on Saturday and Sunday mornings and the noise and disturbance we are suffering as a result has become unacceptable. 

We therefore urge the Licensing Panel to modify the existing license so that the bar must close by 1am at weekends with no member of the public admitted after midnight. We feel that were these conditions to be imposed, the levels of noise & anti-social behaviour would drastically reduce in a very short time and the revised opening times would still allow the bar a very reasonable number of hours in which to trade each day. 

A short film of cctv footage with sound is availble to view on YouTube by clicking this link:

https://youtu.be/v9P9x-lr6dM

The footage is taken from a camera on the building directly next door to The Lounge Bar and covers three consecutive weekends during December 2015.