Next door opening takeaway!!! No warning

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Hi, hope you can help.

We live in a residential area, next door has been a wool shop for years. It has a very small cafe that no one ever really visits.

Today I noticed a new sign on the front, googled it and it’s going to be a takeaway!! Also with inside seating and alcohol. No planning application has been made since 2021.

Where do I stand with this? I don’t want to live next to a flipping takeaway/drinking house!!!

What sort of takeaway? Retail to a 'café' doesn't require planning so it's possible that they're calling it as such.

Can you enquire if an alcohol license has been applied for?

A drinking house 😂 I doubt a takeaway with a few seats is going to become a den of iniquity.

I live next to an Indian takeaway and the back of the building smells of an Indian takeaway come 5pm altho I'm in flats so it doesn't affect me and my building is really old so good thick walls but I would be worried about noise, parking and smells?

Contact your local council planning department and ask if it is a legal change to their existing use.

Also speak to your local councillor.

We had one planned at the end of the road. People complained and it was refused. It's now an HMO.

Obviously lodge your view with the local authority.

But yoh live next to a commercial surely there was always a risk it would change hands. There was no guarantee it would stay a quiet wool shop/cafe forever.

As you describe it would probably need planning permission for a change of use. Cafe is in the same category as a shop but takeaways are different. Contact your council or local councillor to find out the facts. You can object to a change of use and your local councillors will often help with that

Arguably it is not a change of usage as it still is a food outlet/ commercial premises, so no planning consent required. You may have scope for objecting to an alcohol licence, but they could always get around this with a bring your own policy.

I work next door but one to a takeaway and it's horrific. They start cooking around midday even though they only open at 5pm and all you can smell is onions and garlic/strong spices along with the strong smell of oil/grease. We also get a lot of blocked drains........ It's put me off takeaway food for life and I swear that I come home smelling of it. You can't have the doors/windows open once they've started cooking, and they have a lot of deliveries during the day. We also have to secure our parking area when we've finished else we have cars in and out all evening collecting takeaways.

I'd do some investigating a bit rapidly on this.

As a quiet wool shop/cafe that no-one ever used, I would have said there was a very good chance of the unit changing hands 😂

I would be wary of the takeaway. I’ve had to complain to the Council about the noise coming from the chimneys of the takeaway that I live next door to. The Council tried to ignore me. My house now hums for 11 hours 7 days a week. Dispute ongoing. And that is just one of the problems. I haven’t complained about the others yet.

Oh that sounds like a nightmare! It’s the smell from the cooking and the constant stream of customers that will be very disruptive. I hope the council take your complaint seriously.

Also no doubt plagued by Just Eat drivers/riders abandoning their cars/bikes all over the place.

Previous posters are correct that PP is needed for change of use to a takeaway establishment, but not a cafe. See here
www.planningportal.co.uk/permission/common-projects/shops/i-want-to-convert-a-shop-to-a-cafe-public-house-or-takeaway

Don't get your hopes up though. Takeaways have to be somewhere near to where people live. I am no expert on planning, but would imagine that it wouldn’t be difficult for them to get authorisation for change of use.