£20,000 fine if you look at next door’s tea room
Feuding cafe owner given staring ban
A FEUD between rival village tea rooms has led to the owner of one cafe being banned from even looking at the other – under threat of a £20,000 fine.
Yoga teacher Kerry Radley, 45, opened Radley’s in 2014 – a year before a parish councillor’s wife opened a rival tea room called Prima Rosa a few yards away.
Miss Radley claimed her posters began going missing and a sign was vandalised, while she says fake bad reviews were posted online.
The mother-of-three said her business finally went bust thanks to the unfair competition.
But her rivals – councillor Martin Nudd, 57, and his wife Judith, 48 – claimed it was the yoga teacher who
‘They’ve tried to ruin me’
had been attacking them. Miss Radley has now received a Community Protection Notice from the local borough council, asserting she was the source of all the problems and had been ‘causing anxiety’ to Mrs Nudd.
The order bars her from even looking into the rival cafe from a car outside, going in or taking photographs of any customers.
If she breaks the order she can be fined up to £20,000, including for ‘staring into the premises to intimidate Judith Nudd and/or Martin Nudd’.
The notice from Broadland District Council says it is satisfied that Miss Radley is ‘responsible for unreasonable conduct which is persistent or continuing in nature’.
But she claims that she is innocent of all charges and is appealing the order.
Miss Radley has lived in the Norfolk village of Salhouse for 20 years, and three years ago decided to open a combined post office, shop and cafe, investing £75,000.
The yoga teacher said: ‘ It’s ended with the police coming into my shop and serving me with this bizarre order in front of my customers. It was so embarrassing I burst into tears and had to close. They’ve tried to ruin me.
‘The conditions of the Community Protection Notice are just ridiculous – the ban means I cannot drive down the road in case I look at Prima Rosa.
‘It’s crazy because I need to look left, which is where Prima Rosa is, to pull up safely outside my property.’ She said she hoped to recoup her losses by having her closed shop reclassified as suitable for residential use – but says the parish council is likely to try to stop her doing so.
Last night the Nudds were unavailable for comment. Mr Nudd had claimed earlier he ‘had found it best not to comment in order to prevent inflaming any situation’.
Anti-nanny state campaign group The Manifesto Club has claimed Community Protection Notices are open to abuse by councils, who can use them ‘to target the individuals of which officials disapprove’.