Protest over all-night service station shop

Sep 12 2005 By Neil Elkes, Evening Mail

FAMILIES living next to an all-night service station fear licensing chiefs have opened the floodgates for an all-night takeaway.

It comes after the Somerfield convenience store and Texaco service station, on Alcester Road, Moseley, was given the go-ahead to sell hot food from 11pm to 5am nightly under new licensing laws.

The company claims it simply wants to continue serving hot coffee and microwave pies and pasties for late customers.

But outraged residents said the shop is already a magnet for rowdy drunks crawling home from Moseley's pubs and bars, resulting in noise and disturbances, including occasional violence. They claim this will only worsen.

Local residents' association representative David Rutter, of Chantry Road, said: "We already suffer from noise and nuisance and resulting sleep deprivation.

"The current situation is bad enough, but we are worried that this licence gives them permission to expand in future."

Somerfield claimed it has no plans to serve more than hot drinks or microwave snacks such as pasties, pies, pizzas or burgers, from the shop.

Solicitor Micah Jenkins, representing Somerfield, said: "We are not asking for anything we have not done before. Residents are being opportunistic using this forum to raise their arguments against the store."

He added that police and environmental services made no complaints or had no objections to the licence.