Restaurant's licence to be decided after owners scrap 4am plan

Sandwell Council’s licensing committee will decide whether to award De Vibez Lounge in Cape Hill, Smethwick, a premises licence after delaying a decision in June over fire safety concerns.

The owners of the restaurant had been given more time to make their venue safer after applying their application for a late-night licence earlier this year raised eyebrows at West Midlands Fire Service.

The fire service raised an objection to De Vibez Lounge’s late-night plans saying its safety officers had found no fire alarms or detectors when they visited the Cape Hill restaurant.

The restaurant had originally applied to open until 4am at weekends but has now agreed to cut the hours after talks with the council.

The agreed opening hours are now 8am to 10.30pm from Monday to Thursday – with the restaurant vacated by 11pm – and 8pm to 11.30pm on Friday and Saturday with an extra 30 minutes for everyone to leave. The opening hours for Sundays and Bank Holidays would be 10am to 10pm plus an extra half an hour.

The council’s licensing committee met in Oldbury on June 5 and was expected to make a decision on the application but councillors agreed to give the restaurant more time after they were told the work to install the fire safety equipment had started.

The fire service said an alarm system needed to be installed and the artificial plants removed “as a minimum” before the objection could be removed, and also said the applicant did not turn up for a planned visit and a supplied phone number “seemed to be incorrect.”

The African restaurant opened in the former Sampson Lloyd pub in December last year. The former Wetherspoon’s pub on the corner of Cape Hill and Waterloo Road had sat empty for several years after the budget chain left in 2014.

The licensing committee meets from 10am on July 29.