A Wandsworth licensing committee meeting exploded into a festival of accusation and recrimination this week following an application for longer opening and serving hours at Sweet Tooth Café on Upper Richmond Road.
The meeting began with officers detailing the license proposal: alcohol sales extended to 11pm Sunday to Thursday and until 1 am on Fridays and Saturdays, with late-night refreshments extended to an extra half an hour longer. The hours were unusual for this part of Putney, which is largely residential.
What was more unusual though was the number of people in the room and on the remote feed. So many people had asked to speak that the usual response time was reduced from five minutes to three to fit them all in.
As written submissions had already made clear, there was a high degree of animosity directed at the cafe from local residents – summarised by officers as “public nuisance concerns raised from late night drinking, noise disturbance from customers arriving and leaving late at the premises, loud music, antisocial behaviour, increased incidents of crime.”
The comments themselves are much more visceral: claims of shouting, fighting and loud music. Children kept awake until the early hours, residents covering their heads with pillows and jamming in earplugs, and aggressive responses each time a resident went over to the cafe to complain or ask them the quieten down.
Among the complaints filed, one stood out – a young man who lives above the cafe came to realise that not only were the people in the cafe aware of the impact of the noise they were making but had no intention of stopping. He claimed in his account that he was confronted by a group of 6-8 men and one of them told him: “We forced Michael [the previous tenant] out. We can force you out.”
“This behaviour felt threatening and hostile, and deeply unsettled us,” he told Wandsworth Council.
Enter the lawyer
Cafe owner Mya Dragovich had come prepared, hiring a solicitor to make her case for her for why the committee should agree to a permanent licence despite the complaints. He sat next to her in the meeting room in Wandsworth Town Hall and took an unexpected position: the complaints were irrelevant.
“Somebody tells us music reverberates through their pillow, but they won’t in this case because we’re not applying for regulated entertainment,” he argued, making a narrow legal point in an effort to reframe the excessive noise complaints as something to be dealt with under other laws.
“There are measures in place under different acts to deal with unsuitable noise from a premises but it’s not the Licensing Act.”
He then made light of the complaints, claiming that “apart from a 7th of June incident there have been no complaints registered that I’m certainly aware of…” (it was later confirmed there had been a wide range of complaints going back years.) He put the blame for local upset squarely at the door of the young men living above the cafe.
“The lady to my right has been running this business for the past eight years,” he said referring to Mrs Dragovich. “For the past four years she’s had no complaints. We have two residents who move in two months ago and suddenly it’s the worst place on earth to live and complaints are following complaints.” He went on:
“Now tell me I’m wrong but surely when people move into a new place they know what’s below them and it seems to me a case of let’s move in and change the framework of what’s been going on for the last X amount of years in an area because we don’t like it.”
That argument was to receive some lengthy responses, but before residents were able to speak, the lawyer laid out a string of “safeguards” to resolve any issues—a soundproof curtain over the door, waiter-only service, all guests seated, closed windows after 11 pm, only five smokers allowed outside at any given time – their number monitored by staff – and even taxi-dispersal policies to prevent people chatting in the street.
A different world
As councillors began to dig into how these measures would actually work, events grew increasingly surreal. The lawyer downplayed the 20 formal objections by claiming 20 complaints were nothing compared to a petition of 100+ supportive signatures that the cafe had given the committee at the last minute, and argued that the other 980 residents in the area had implicitly backed the café’s application because they hadn’t formally complained.
And there was the “vertical drinking”. No one would be allowed to stand and drink, he explained, they would all have a seat and provided with waiter service under the new licence. Which led to a lengthy back-and-forth over how that many people – figures ranged from 15-25 – would actually be able to fit into the very small cafe space while seated.
Besides, the lawyer argued, the cafe was unlikely to use the extended hours anyway, it just gave the business some flexibility:
“The fact that they’re asking for one o’clock Friday and Saturday doesn’t mean you’ll stay open to one o’clock every single Friday and Saturday – there may not be the need. In the long term it works out more economical to have it on your actual licence rather than coming back 15 times a year, cap in hand to the council saying please can I have a temporary event.”
Residents speak – loudly
When the mic finally turned to the residents, a very different picture emerged, most vividly when 87-year-old Ms Ellen, who had travelled to the council chamber in person to make her case spoke about recent events.
“I’ve been a resident in Ormond Court for 56 years,” she noted before reminiscing about the lovely times she has spent at the cafe. “When this venue, which we’re talking about, was a coffee shop, and I must say it’s the most delightful looking premises to look across on, I’ve often enjoyed a cup of tea, a cup of coffee with friends there…”
But she then told a story about how, in the early hours and unable to sleep because of the noise, she got dressed and went over to the cafe to ask them to turn things down.
“I couldn’t imagine the din and the noise that happened on the first occasion that this happened with people there. I went across the road, which I shouldn’t have done. I shouted, could I speak to a manageress? I think there were two people sitting. The rest was full of people standing up and jumping up and down. I was told, go away, go away, close your windows. And I was shooed out.
The second occasion when there were noises, people tried to close the door. I could see them. But you can hardly breathe at such a tiny place inside, so the door was completely being pushed open.”
Ms Ellen explained her “very strong objections to this” noting that the Sweet Tooth Cafe had gone from a “beautiful, delightful little coffee shop” to something that she now dreads. “I dread what’s to come. I’m glad I plucked up the courage to come,” she told councillors, before addressing the cafe owner directly: “I don’t wish you any harm with your business and I understand the economical difficulties, but it’s my home.”
Other residents were less gracious. Of the 10 or so that had asked to speak against the application at the meeting, one confessed: “We dread the weekends. We just don’t know when we’re going to hear noise. We’ve tried to complain politely. And we just dread noise, continual noise, every weekend now.”
Another standout was one of the residents above the cafe. John McNally reported being kept awake until 4 am, knocking on the cafe’s doors which no one opened because it was so loud inside no one could hear him banging. Another, Mr McMullen, measured the sound in his flat during late-night karaoke — 110 dB — louder than a police siren or a pneumatic drill.
“This has had a serious impact on my quality of life, affecting my ability to sleep and maintain a peaceful living environment. Granting a licence for the sale of alcohol until 1am is likely to worsen this situation.”
Flawed floorplan
It then emerged that the cafe floor plan submitted for the extended licence also offered a different version of reality. The cafe owner was asked if the plan in the official papers was accurate. It was, she said indignantly, adding “except for the bar.”
The bar, residents swiftly pointed out, now takes up most of the space and the interior has been restructured to act more like a club than a cafe. How people would be able to sit and get waiter service in the new layout was repeatedly questioned. Where was this new bar, how long was it, how much space did it take up, councillors asked. A new floorplan was requested.
But it was perhaps the environmental health officer that delivered the most damning testimony. He confirmed his team had issued a statutory nuisance notice after an inspection, recorded customers standing and drinking, and agreed that the residents had good reason to complain. It also turned out that a second official noise complaint had been lodged just days before the hearing. The cafe, the officer noted, simply wasn’t set up to serve as a nighttime venue, not least because there was virtually no sound insulation.
“if you move into a late-night venue… you are going to cause a nuisance.” He urged that anything beyond 11 pm was inappropriate under current conditions. “We believe that it’d be inappropriate to grant a license, certainly beyond 11 o ‘clock… the music will need to be much more carefully controlled and dare I say, not played at all.”
Had enough
As residents offloaded, and the cafe’s solicitor tried to downplay the complaints, tension rose to the point where even the chair of the meeting, who up to that point had been carefully managing events, lost it. When one participant repeatedly tried to talk over her, she snapped:
“No, no, no, no, no, sir, sir, sir, sir, sir, please. Mic off please, that’s incredibly rude. I’m just gonna say I actually found that incredibly disrespectful… I don’t expect to be disrespected in that manner. You came to the meeting late, we allowed you to come and observe and you decided to speak over me… Don’t ever do that again.”
Eventually after nearly two hours, the meeting reached its summing up, and the solicitor tried to regain ground – while lashing out at those who had criticised him – arguing that conditions on the licence could be enforced with steep fines and even jail for breaches, and insisted the Met Police hadn’t objected. The application should be approved.
But the stack of resident testimony, not to mention the flaws in the floorplan, and the environmental noise findings proved a potent challenge.
By the end, the public gallery had sat through a spectacle of strange promises and legal acrobatics unravelled by real stories: a 87‑year‑old who simply needed peace; locals intimidated and threatened when they sought to complain; and a resident who thought he’d moved in above a cafe, not a nightclub.
The public meeting finished and a closed-door meeting by the licensing sub-committee held immediately afterwards to weigh evidence. The outcome remains to be seen—but given the fiery pushback and expert testimony, it seems unlikely Sweet Tooth’s late-night dreams will be warmly received.
