A woman who has lived in a 700-year-old building for the past 12 years has complained to Cornwall Council about smell and noise since a restaurant moved in beneath her home two years ago.

The concerns came to light after the Barbican Bistro in Penzance applied for a variation of a premises licence to change the layout of the business.

A meeting of a council licensing committee heard on Wednesday, January 29 that brothers Jay and Jack Liddicoat, who run the restaurant near the seafront in Barbican Lane, had made a retrospective application as they had mistakenly carried out the work early last year without permission. The refurbishment work had modernised the interior of the restaurant and doubled capacity from 28 covers to 56 thanks to a Town Deal enterprise grant, which also allowed the business to employ more staff.

Kymm Sandum, who lives above the Modern European bistro with her husband, was the only complainant against the licensing application.

She had originally written to the council saying that since the bistro opened two years ago “we have had nothing but trouble with the extreme amount of noise and smell. I am worried that any more alterations down there will only create more problems for us. We can no longer use our living room or go to bed while they are open”.

The Barbican building is divided into various commercial and residential properties. The part of the building that Barbican Bistro is located in comprises a dining room, kitchen, toilet, large store and outside seating area.

David Inzani, a solicitor representing the Liddicoats, said: “While my clients take the concerns of Miss Sandum very seriously, the matters relating to hot food including kitchen odours is not in fact relevant to the application of a premises licence.”

He pointed out the brothers did take her concerns into account when refurbishing the restaurant and moved the kitchen to the rear of the premises away from Miss Sandum’s property. The meeting heard there is an office above the kitchen and there have been no complaints from people working in that space.

Mr Inzani said the Liddicoats have had a number of discussions with Miss Sandum regarding noise complaints and they didn’t believe the restaurant was causing a nuisance but they had “gone to the great length” of instructing their construction team on how best to insulate the premises. As a result, they installed a double layer of soundproof plasterboard in the ceiling directly below Miss Sandum’s residence “at great expense”.

An environmental health officer found during a visit in March 2024, after the works had been completed, there was no public nuisance being caused by the restaurant.

Miss Sandum told the committee: “We were unaware it was going to be a fish restaurant opening below us. The building is 700 years old so obviously trying to keep noise and smell down would be a problem.

“Before the work was done we had approached them about noise and smell – the smell was appalling, really appalling, and the noise was bad. They had put tables outside which were below our window and when people are drinking they get louder and louder, so that was [affecting us] inside and outside our home.”

“We had approached them a few times and they never got back to us. We have asked them to come and talk to us and they never have.”

She added: “Since the work has been done the noise has got a hell of a lot worse. The smell’s changed because now the kitchen is out the back it depends on the weather. If they have their windows closed when the weather’s bad then the smell comes up into our house like it did before.”

Miss Sandum said noise and nuisance gets worse during the busy summer period and there have been incidents where people have been “peeing up my doorstep and up my wall instead of going into the bistro”. She told councillors she had recorded several incidents of antisocial behaviour and noise on video.

Mr Inzani responded that the relationship between his clients and Miss Sandum became “strained and untenable” and the brothers subsequently reached out to their neighbour to improve things. She shook her head in disagreement at these comments.

The solicitor said that Miss Sandum’s comments about antisocial behaviour in the outside seating area would be taken on board but as far as the application was concerned it wasn’t relevant.

The committee granted the application as the layout changes fitted the licensing remit. Members noted that the restaurant owners were agreeable in liaising with their neighbour in relation to the issues raised by Miss Sandum. They felt the variation of the licence wouldn’t affect Penzance’s Cumulative Impact Zone in which the bistro is based.