Manchester’s Night & Day Cafe posted an update last week regarding its ongoing legal battle with Manchester City Council, which returns to court this week. The grassroots venue said that it hopes this week’s court hearing can finally resolve the matter and let it get back to “nurturing culture and creativity”.
That update begins by providing some background to the legal dispute. “More than eighteen months ago Manchester City Council served a noise abatement notice on us based on a single noise complaint from a resident”, it explains.
“N&D has continued to operate in exactly the same manner during this period and exactly the same as it has done previously for over 30 years. The resident who complained moved out several months ago and we’ve not received any further noise complaints”.
Complying with the order would force Night & Day to change its late night operations which could in turn make the venue’s business unviable.
Critics of the council point out that the venue had been in operation for decades before the complainant moved into the adjacent property. And, indeed, venues like Night & Day helped to turn a run-down part of Manchester into a vibrant cultural hub where people want to live.
Not only that but, as last week’s update says, “N&D maintains that the source of this problem is that no acoustic consideration was given during the planning and development stages of the apartments next to the pre-existing venue N&D. This is confirmed within the apartments planning file held today at MCC Planning Portal”.
The dispute initially got to the magistrate’s court in Manchester last November. After a pause, the hearing was meant to resume in January, but that was postponed to March to allow talks between the venue and council to continue. At the March hearing the case was again adjourned with the judge ordering that more testing of noise levels at the venue be carried out.
It remains to be seen what now happens as the matter returns to the magistrate’s court for a third time. The venue’s update from last week concludes: “We head back to court next week for a three day hearing, hopeful that this matter will finally be resolved and enable N&D to continue doing what it does best – putting on bands, nurturing culture and creativity, and putting smiles on the faces of the people that visit the venue”.