Residents take a stand against extended trading hours in Fourways
FOURWAYS – A heated debate with concerned community members in the Fourways and Lonehill areas brought up many negative consequences extending the hours of the Billy the Bum's establishment for the area.
An application to extend a Fourways bar’s trading hours to 4am has been withdrawn following vehement opposition from residents.
A public participation meeting was hosted on 16 January where about 30 residents living in the Fourways area came to object to the extended trading hours for Billy the Bum’s bar.
In December last year, the new owner of Billy the Bum’s, Aslam Reddy, sent an application to the Gauteng Liquor Board with the request to extend their closing time on the weekends to 4am.
An email was sent out regarding the application which invited residents to send in their objections to the Douglasdale Police Station by 8 January. Another notification was sent out via email regarding the date of the public meeting to take place with Reddy and his lawyer Leon Wollnik. Both notifications were posted on the Douglasdale Community Policing Forum (CPF) Facebook page.
According to Wollnik, however, no advertisement about the meeting and sending objections was posted on social media directly from Billy the Bums, but who received the emails sent to Whatsapp community groups on social media.
Some residents highlighted their objections. One attendee, Linda Bosfield, said that there were as many as 50 objections made, despite Wollnik originally indicating there were four objections. Issues regarding where the public meeting was advertised, filed noise complaints and filed reports regarding different incidents that happened at the bar were raised. Many attendees called for Reddy and Wollnik to reconvene the meeting when there would be a Gauteng Liquor Board representative present.
An interesting point of concern came from another attendee, Amanda Pybus who works at the 24-hour Fourways Veterinary Hospital. She said, “[Fourways Veterinary Hospital] is a direct neighbour. To take the licence already to 4am, no resident is going to agree to that.
“We already only take our animals out at 2am because that is when the noise level drops sufficiently to be able to walk our animals. It’s not practical to leave it to 4am. These animals need to be walked at night to do their business…The animals in our hospital take priority over people drinking until 4am.”
Disgruntled members of the community and police officers present raised many issues that could arise, which included the increase of crime, noise levels, violence, and drunk-driving occurrences.
Wollnik said that there would have been security measures put in place if the application had been successful. These would have included additional outdoor lighting and doormen among others.
Coming to the conclusion of the meeting, Reddy realised the reception of the new trading hour times was not well received by community and police alike. “What we can acknowledge is comments in favour of the trading hours are very little to none, and we accept that,” he said.
Reddy added that this was not an attempt at trying to detract from the issues at hand in the community, and he will work closely with the police and security. “We want to bring a strong equity brand. You have my word that if we ever do look at an extension, we will consult first the ward councillor, with the community as well.”
The application withdrawal will be sent to the liquor board and those who attended the meeting.
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