Plans for a student bar open until 4am just yards from a ward treating young cancer patients in Birmingham have sparked objections from health chiefs.
Children and teenagers with cancer face sleepless nights and added stress if the nightspot is allowed to open across the road from Birmingham Children’s Hospital it has been claimed.
The hospital has said that plans to open a bar from 7am to 4am seven-days-a-week will create unbearable noise and nuisance for some of its most vulnerable patients.
Their objections follow the announcement of plans to launch The Lecturer Bar at 205 Corporation Street, which is also located across the road from Aston University campus.
The venue was, until last year, the Sound Bar which the hospital claims attracted 23 complaints for noise and nuisance between September 2009 and February 2011.
The hospital’s chief operating officer, David Eltringham, said: “The majority of these complaints related to unacceptable levels of noise occurring after midnight and regularly into the early hours of the morning.
“The wards affected by the levels of noise from these premises are ward 15, oncology, and the Teenage Cancer Trust. Both wards have some of our most dependent patients who spend long periods of time as inpatients.”
He added that late night noise can keep them awake which ‘can be extremely disturbing to patients and present a risk to their successful treatment.”
There is also a fear of drunk and disorderly behaviour near the hospital’s 24-hour accident and emergency unit.
The club’s licence application will be considered by Birmingham City Council tomorrow. Club owner Nihal Enterprise has requested the right to stage live music and entertainment, recorded music, screen sporting events and allow dancing almost round the clock.
It also wants to be able to serve food until 4am daily.
West Midlands Police has also raised a formal objection and may push for licensing restrictions more in keeping with a restaurant than a lively nightclub.
PC Abdul Rohoman said: “We have serious concerns in relation to public nuisance and crime and disorder.”
