A South East London Pizza Hut has been granted permission to stay open later, despite concerns about delivery driver behaviour. The Pizza Hut in Charlton Village applied to Greenwich Council to alter its premises licence, seeking to extend late-night hours until 1am Sunday to Thursday and until 2am on Fridays and Saturdays.
However, the council approved a more limited extension. The pizza delivery service can now sell takeaway pizzas until 12.30am Sunday to Thursday and until 1am on Fridays and Saturdays. Greenwich Council's Licensing Sub-Committee B imposed additional conditions on how the Pizza Hut must manage delivery drivers after granting the premises licence variation at its June 9 meeting.
Third-party drivers only
Speaking at the meeting, Syed Hussain, operations manager for JJ & Team Ltd, which operates 42 Pizza Hut delivery stores across London and the South East, clarified that late-night deliveries would only be handled by third-party drivers from Uber Eats and Deliveroo, not Pizza Hut's own drivers.
"Drivers are notified through their platform when the orders are ready. The intention is that they arrive, they collect the order and they leave immediately. They're not required to wait outside the premises at all," he said.
He confirmed that Pizza Hut staff would monitor driver conduct. Any drivers causing nuisance through noise or parking on private driveways would be reported to their platform and blocked from collecting orders. Mr Hussain stated that they had not encountered such problems at their other London stores.
JJ & Team Ltd director Kishore Jukhoop added: "We understand the nature of the issues raised and we are willing to comply and we have been doing so without any issues in various other boroughs."
Resident concerns
Cllr David Gardner spoke on behalf of Charlton Village residents at the meeting. He noted he had lived opposite the Pizza Hut store for 25 years. "Of all the takeaways we have in Charlton Village, this attracts the most illegal parking cases, the most litter and the lorry deliveries always come and park on the double yellow lines and hold up the buses and so forth," he said.
Cllr Gardner argued that the "quite unreasonable" licence extension would lead to more delivery drivers illegally parking near the Pizza Hut, resulting in increased late-night noise and disruption from vehicles.
Charlton Village resident Stephanie Godbold, who lives above the shops opposite the Pizza Hut, said she had witnessed delivery drivers parking illegally outside her home. Her main objection was noise. "I live in a mixed residential and commercial area. I have to accept there's going to be a certain level of noise, but I think it's all about balance," she said.
"The applicant has said that they want to serve their customers' demands, but I don't think a business has a right to just completely carry on serving customers' demands in a completely unmitigated way and not take into account the quality of life of the people in their local community."
New conditions imposed
To address concerns about delivery drivers, the committee has ordered Pizza Hut Charlton to ensure all delivery drivers conduct collections at a designated point at the rear of the business. Pizza Hut must also maintain a complaints log recording all complaints related to delivery drivers.
