A3 / A5 Licenced Premise for Mixed Use?

[Biohyt]

Hi all

Can you please help me about 3 questions:

1) Can I use a A3 licenced business premise for mixed use (to sell retail store products like bags, and giftware, as well as grocery products like olive oil, and hot meal for customers) ?

2) Is it legal to use A3 licenced premise as a hot food takeaway as well as serving hot food to customers in the restaurant?

3) Although A5 licenced premise should be used for hot food takeaway, as I see, there are small amounts of chairs inside these premises and people are served meal. Can you please comment about whether this is legal, or kind of ignored due to limited number of seats?

Thank you for your time

 

[ethical PR]

Have you looked on the website of the council where the premises are? This should give you the information you need.

 

[kulture]

Details matter with this kind of question. A forum is unlikely to be able to answer this. The best thing to do is talk to the planning officer on the local council. Use and change of use and permitted use can all depend on the mix and percentages of each. For example a bookstore which mainly sells books can have a small coffee machine. Or a cafe can have a bookshelf from which they sell books. Planning class for each will be different.

 

[Biohyt]

I guess the determining factor of whether a premise can be used as both retailer and a3 type restaurant is the main purpose of that business. The website says: ""You don’t need to be inspected or approved if you sell direct to the public or retailers like caterers, pubs and restaurants, as long as: food is less than 25% of your trade"

Do you think this 25% means 25% of the total revenue (in terms of pounds £) , or 25% in terms of the total number of sales we do?

 

[GTL]

The most important thing is to get professional advice on the matter from a commercial planning consultant. Strutt and Parker has an excellent department.

These 'restrictions' determining what proportion of business comes from this and that is more of a guide than soviet era set of limitations; inasmuch as you may find that consumer demand dictates how much business comes from each facet of your business.

I set up a modest retail chain a decade ago, the sites of which had, on the face of it, some onerous restrictions, including how much stuff sold should be form a certain radius etc (known as a section 106). In practice, based on my experience, the spirit of the law is as important as the letter of the law and in my case it was all about ensuring that the outlets could not become supermarkets.

So for instance if you have a restaurant, and the council does not wish to allow the property to become a fully fledged takeaway, as long as you do not become a de facto takeaway then you will probably 'be okay' (ie you'll 'probably' be ok to offer takeaway food, but the business must ultimately trade as a sit down restaurant).

So its a grey area where interpretation is hugely subjective, largely on the part of the Planning Officer. The local development plan for the authority will give you some background plus the planning context (thus takeaways, in the example above, might be frowned upon for all sorts of reasons; this if you end up as more of a takeaway than a restaurant, you may find a few issues).

You really need to liaise with a planning consultant, to give you a sense of up to date context in planning law, understand the local development plan and have a chat with the planning officer. You will achieve a great deal doing this.

I would also say that it does not play to try to be 'clever' in such important matters as use classes. Make your decisions based on the spirit of the law at the very least, a conversation with the planing officer. The more you do to ingratiate yourself with the planning officer, the more you will get back in return.