Manchester City Council has made a “declaration of war” on the city’s night time industry with its ongoing legal battle against the Night & Day Café, a lawyer representing the venue in court said this week. The council’s legal rep countered that venue owner Jennifer Smithson has “stamped her feet in the playground” in an effort to get her own way by fighting the case.
The comments were made at the end of the latest three day hearing over a noise abatement notice served against Night & Day in November 2021, which the venue is appealing.
According to the Manchester Evening News, Council lawyer Leo Charalambides said that the venue is “attempting to invite the court to go against centuries of legal tradition and two supreme court judgements” and if the judge was to “join this shangri-la” then the council will “be taking this case further”.
Night & Day’s rep Sarah Clover said that this “threat … to persecute Night and Day all the way up to the Supreme Court” was “a declaration of war by this council, not just on Night & Day, but on the whole of their night time economy at such a desperate time for this industry”.
The notice filed against the Night & Day is based on a single noise complaint from a flat that is now unoccupied. The venue argues that the flat was built - and planning permission approved - without sound proofing, despite the knowledge that the venue could cause issues once occupants moved in. However, they note, the complaint that led to the notice was the only one that had ever been filed since the property was built in 2000.
Clover argued that the ”unjustified” noise complaint should be “quashed” by the judge. For it to stand, she said, “the court must find there is a nuisance now or there is a likely nuisance”. As the flat is currently unoccupied and there have been no other noise complaints, it cannot do either, she said.
On the council side, Charalambides said, “the fact that Jennifer Smithson stamped her feet in the playground and said ‘we were here first and we are going to do what we have always done’ made no difference” to the case.
“There's a special importance that should be attached [to the right to] enjoy … one’s home”, he said. “I am not sure there’s a special importance that should be attached to being able to hear ‘Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This’ while you try to go to sleep”.
District Judge Margaret McCormack said that the court would reconvene to hear her judgement later this month.
