The legal mistakes and dubious complaints
THE LIMITED issues regarding temporary events licences focus on interlocking licensing objectives.
Only one relevant consideration came before the Committee: avoiding public nuisance.
Previous events at the Hangar attracted a small number complaints - around six in total since it first opened, The Herald was told.
A number of complaints came from a Milford Haven Town Councillor who lives in Skomer Drive. Their property is one of several houses backing onto Thornton Industrial Estate.
Cllr Alan Dennison, who owns a property on Skomer Drive and was a director of another entertainment venue in Milford Haven, filed a further complaint.
In a post on The Pembrokeshire Herald’s Facebook feed following our online report, Alan Dennison said he was not involved in the other venue’s business.
At the time he made that comment, his remark was true.
Companies House records show Cllr Dennison resigned as a director of Imperial Hall Limited on August 4, 2023.
That resignation was filed online on the day of the Licensing Committee (May 1, 2024) and almost certainly after the applicant raised the directorship at the meeting.
Cllr Dennison raised a planning issue before the first event at Unit 4 on Thornton Industrial Estate, which took place last October. He raised it in an email dated July 15, weeks before he purportedly stepped down from involvement with the Imperial Hall.
Before Wednesday, May 1, Cllr Dennison was registered as a director of Imperial Hall Limited.
The Herald previously reported that directorship after Cllr Dennison intervened in discussions about Scolton Manor’s use as a wedding venue. Alan Dennison never took steps to correct the record, either on his register of interests (filed in June last year) or with Companies House.
The Council’s solicitor, Jeff Harries, advised Committee members to stick to the point. He observed members had discussed issues irrelevant to the temporary event’s licence and barely discussed the relevant points.
The Committee had no noise pollution readings. Its members had nothing to contradict the expert’s report commissioned by the applicant. They were offered that report but
never read it.
Yet, without any corroborating evidence relating to the alleged noise problems and with evidence available to contradict those complaints, the Committee issued a counter-notice stopping the temporary events licence.
Its members also ignored a factor that would have been apparent had they considered the event’s licence a separate issue, as their solicitor advised.
The objections referred to alleged noise nuisance from musical events. The event subject to the failed
application is a charity boxing evening.
You’d imagine someone would have realised that comparing a music event to a boxing night was a mistake.
The Council’s solicitor appeared to; it’s a shame the Committee’s members didn’t listen to him.