An iconic east London music venue which wanted to increase its capacity from 3,100 people to 3,600 people and open an extra two hours each day as part of a new license application has been turned down by the council. The Troxy, a Grade II listed Art Deco building on Commercial Road, Stepney had applied for a new premises license as it wanted to update existing conditions and open an additional two hours every day of the week.
The venue is currently open until midnight from Sunday to Thursday and until 2am on Friday and Saturday, and under the proposed license it applied to open until 2am Sunday to Thursday and until 4am on Friday and Saturday. The venue’s current license has a limit on how many days a year it can stay open until 2am from Sunday to Thursday and 4am on Fridays and Saturdays.
On 12 occasions a year, Troxy also wanted to stay open until 6am on Fridays and Saturdays and wanted to increase its capacity by an additional 500 people. But the plans had upset many residents living nearby as they claimed they are already being kept up at night by some revelers leaving the site noisily and hanging out outside their homes.
Troxy’s director, Tom Sutton-Roberts, told Tower Hamlets Council’s licensing sub-committee that the venue had been a hugely important part of Stepney ever since it first opened as a cinema in 1933. Mr Sutton-Roberts said the venue was once Britain’s largest. cinema and has undergone several transformations including being a training school for the London Opera Center and a bingo hall.
He said: “We are not just a music venue, we are a critical venue for everyone. In the last year alone, 125 music venues closed permanently in the UK and less than 60 per cent of those remaining have reported that they are financially stable; therefore Troxy’s importance within the industry has increased.”
He added: “Having said that we do not take every event we are offered, we are incredibly selective about the type of events we hold, considering the impact on the local community and our unwavering commitment to the four licensing objectives.” Residents who were against the new permit being granted then had their chance to speak.
One resident said: “I’ve worked in this area for 20 years as a licensee and where the Troxy is is not Soho; it’s a residential area on both sides of the building. On the day of the event, all the crowds block our pavements and children and elderly people can’t walk through the sidewalk because people are drinking and littering.”
Bill Donne, a licensing consultant who represented Troxy, said the venue had changed the way doormen and security are deployed during events to help with people queuing. Mr Donne said: “The queues start during the day and in the afternoon and when the doors open at 6pm or 7.30pm the people off the streets are gone. I don’t think there’s a problem with the club nights closing at 2am or 3am in the morning as most of these customers are dispersed from Commercial Road.”
A video was then played to the subcommittee showing hundreds of people queuing on several different streets as they waited to enter the venue. The subcommittee also looked at a video of a member of the public urinating in the street, but this was shown privately. When the subcommittee asked both residents and Troxy to summarize their closing arguments, Dunne pointed out that neither Environmental Health nor the Met Police had made any representations against the latest plans.
However, the residents appealed to the sub-committee not to grant the permit. The subcommittee made its decision in private, and it was published on the council’s website a few days later. The sub-committee chose to refuse the license application because they were concerned about the idea of 3,600 people leaving the premises late at night or in the early hours of the morning.
They also said Troxy’s application did not consider the likely impact of large numbers of people leaving the premises more regularly than they currently do. As the proposed license was rejected and this was not a variation of the premise license or a site that the council reviewed, Troxy will continue to operate under the current licence.
Want more from? Sign up to our daily newsletter for all the latest and greatest from across London here.
