A decision to turn down controversial plans for a Stirling restaurant and takeaway – operating since 2020 without permission – has been upheld by councillors.
Members of Stirling Council’s Local Review Body Panel last week heard there was no adequate odour or noise assessment submitted with the plans for Black Rooster Peri Peri and ChurrosNChill on Borestone Crescent which had been the subject of objections from the upstairs neighbours.
But the restaurants are still open as another separate application is in process.
Don Ritchie and Carole Ann Marshall, who have lived in their flat since the 1990s above the Falcon Bar, had complained that they are regularly disturbed by a loud rumbling sound from a large flue and customers shouting in the rear car park as well as cooking smells. The businesses have been operating since spring 2020.
A July 2021 retrospective planning application for the subdivision and change of use from a pub to class three restaurant and takeaway, installation of flue and formation of outdoor seating area (retrospective) and installation of flue was turned down by planners.
And a second planning application submitted in February 2022 – the subject of the review proceedings – was rejected in November that year.
Officers had stated that the development ‘would have a harmful impact on the reasonable residential amenities of adjacent residential properties at Borestone Crescent, and to the wider local area’.
A decision is awaited on a further planning application – submitted in February this year – covering the use of part of a public house as restaurant (class three) with the repositioning/replacement of kitchen ventilation flue and new air conditioning condenser (trading hours 10.30am to 10.30pm).
Last week Stirling Council planning officer Richard Callander told the review panel that there were technical solutions to smell and odour matters at Black Rooster and ChurrosNChill, but planners did not have sufficient confirmation and clarifications from the applicant.
Click here for more news and sport from the Stirling area.
Until the technical information, which had been requested, was submitted “there is a level of uncertainty that we have to deal with” and “given the ongoing concerns raised by the objector [Mr Ritchie] and our own development plan policy which does make a presumption against these types of operations...the application was refused on that basis.”
Mr Callander added: “And then you have got additional issues of the external seating area generating its own level of noise and disturbance.”
Panel member, Stirling Council Provost Douglas Dodds, asked if conditions could be attached to permission involving the removal of the seating area.
Planning officer Robert Templeton replied that he did not think that conditions – specifically about seating – could be removed from the plans.
He added: “That’s the nature of the planning application. Unfortunately if you voted to remove that by condition to make it more acceptable I don’t think it would be legal.”
The review panel concluded that the applicant had been given “ample opportunity” to provide details to council planners and voted unanimously to uphold the November 2022 refusal of the plans.
