Back in 2021 when the hospitality businesses were re-opening at the height of a global pandemic Darlington Borough Council closed a area of Coniscliffe Road in order for the bars on the street operate street seating. This for Dr.inks, Hash, Number 22’s and Orb was a huge help due to the covid restrictions that were put in place for our venues to re-open safely. The street was thriving, busy and had some much positive feedback from customers.
 
 
2022 shortly arrived with the council making plans to bring the street seating back and got the bars to apply for the pavement license, which was exciting especially with the summer and Jubilee fast approaching. We were then told days before that the road would not be closing but instead turned into a one-way system, using concrete planters to divide the road.

We were asked to provide a risk assessment which we did and sent to the relevant department and informed that if anything else was required they would be in touch. All this was accomplished in time and the seating arrived and all was great until Friday 6th May came along with a letter from the council stating that “it come to their attention that we are operating on a street while there’s a live carriage way” and that it was against our conditions on our agreement and if we continued with the street seating then they would SUSPEND or TERMINATE our bar license. This came as a huge shock especially when they had us send in paperwork and we had received no further communication with them prior to Friday the 6th of May.

We feel like it was a very poor decision to keep the road open especially without consultation with the bars on the street. Unfortunately, we have been fighting nearly a week back and forth with no avail we have just received various excuses from the councils’ representatives such as “a visually impaired person could walk out of our venue and into a bollard” etc we have suggested that as a company we pay for a lollipop person to guide customers across the road, but all our suggestions are being knocked back.

We just want our street seating back ready for the summer and Queens Jubilee ��