East Lothian councillors have rejected a bid by Pepe’s Piri Piri in Musselburgh to stay open later, after police warned that the takeaway had become a magnet for anti-social behaviour and violence. The application would have allowed the High Street business to trade until midnight during the week and until 1am on Fridays and Saturdays.
Police told the Licensing Sub Committee the store had been the subject of 17 call-outs in the past year, all linked to youth anti-social behaviour. Officers said those incidents included theft, an assault on a member of the public outside the shop, an assault on staff and vandalism to the premises. The council voted to refuse the application on public safety grounds.
The decision lands at a moment when the business had been asking for a two-year licence extension, with its agent telling councillors that there had been no trouble at the High Street takeaway since March. That argument did not carry much weight with elected members, who were faced with police evidence that the site had already generated repeated intervention over the previous year.
Musselburgh’s High Street has long been a busy late-night strip, and the hearing turned on whether extending trading hours would make the area safer or simply draw more problems into the small hours. The police case did not stop at nuisance behaviour. It included theft, assault and vandalism, all of which pushed the debate beyond ordinary trading concerns and into the question of whether the venue could operate later without adding to the strain on local order.
The takeaway’s agent said management took the safety of staff and customers seriously and offered a shorter licence period so behaviour could be monitored. The agent also said the franchise owner was not willing to meet a police request for trained door security because of the cost. That left councillors weighing a pledge of closer oversight against a record that, in the view of police, showed too many warning signs already.
Councillor Lee-Anne Menzies said she did not believe late opening at the takeaway, or at any fast-food outlet, would add to the benefit of people in Musselburgh. Provost John McMillan went further, saying he found it difficult to support the bid even as an experiment. He said evidence covering longer than March would have helped and added that he hoped behaviour on Musselburgh High Street would change, but concluded he too would not vote to grant the application at this time.
The refusal means Pepe’s Piri Piri will not get the later hours it sought, and the council has now drawn a firm line around a site that police say has already required repeated intervention. For now, the question is whether the refusal will ease pressure on the street or simply push the same problems elsewhere after dark.
