Roebuck pub

Does anyone else think that the Roebuck is turning into a bad neighbour,

Sorry to hear that Mark. I've had some good nights there - can you expand on the problem please?

Sorry to hear too- I have had some nice evennings there- Is it late night noise? It is a very loud pub- but then I am a 'young-foggy'

There's a noisy band playing there right now. On Tuesday night they hired musicians to play outside the pub. When we called them and pointed out that we didn't really want to hear the music, they said they thought it would be nice for the customers and at the same time tried to assure us that they were doing everything to keep the noise down for neighbours. We asked them why they did not have them inside rather than subject residents to sounds not of their choosing. Answer: We thought it would be nice for our customers. We asked them last April to comply with the very least of council requirements to put up the standard notice about residential areas and noise. After a more heated exchange on Saturday night the notices went up but they don't mention noise. Tuesday nights are particularly bad when the cyclists linger after closing time, shouting to each other well past midnight. Polite requests for them to leave or keep their voices down were met with abuse. The Roebuck has basically colonised the space in its immediate vicinity ever since the council in its wisdom turned the area into a piazza. To put this in context we have lived opposite this pub for eight years and it's only in the last year and a half that it has become a nuisance.

Ah yes - that does not sound good (please forgive the pun) or fair.

As usual - the advice is don't suffer, and call the rather excellent Southwark Council noise team.

Their details are here.

Of particular interest to you, in what they can address is: "Nightclubs and pubs including people outside making noise"

Thank you Boss, we actually rang up the council tonight so the process has started and we'll see what happens. The "people outside making noise" sums up the current situation very well, especially during the summer.

To be fair, they do put notices on the benches furthest from the pub asking customers not to use them so as not to annoy the neighbours.

However, in general, I agree that they could be more proactive in managing their customers (and playing music outside does seem OTT).

It seems bizarre that the council basically provided them with a nice outdoor drinking terrace for free, without imposing any conditions on use.

At The Brit, for example, they have a "no drinks outside after [a certain time in the evening -maybe 9pm?]" rule because it's in a residential area.

I generally like the Roebuck. It's becoming increasingly inconvenient trying to push a pram past the drinkers and tables blocking the pavement/piazza, though. And if I lived right next door, I'd be annoyed by the noise.

If they took some action and managed the problems, it could still be a decent pub.

As far as I'm aware the Roebuck has a no drinking outside after 11 policy. Other pubs operate a no drinking outside after 9. As a point of interest, when the council created the Piazza and suggested that a seating area should be provided, both the Roebuck and TNRA pointed out that this would be a bad idea as it would just become an extension to the pub (the Roebuck quite rightly pointing out that it was outside their juridtiction to manage bench drinkers) Unfortunately some people on the Chadwick Sq management committee thought seating was a good idea and persuaded the council to ignore both TNRA and the Roebuck

zcarsand Ivanhoe
We used to like the Roebuck until the noise problem. Absolutely agree that they could be a good neighbour again if they managed the problems better. No drinking after 9 or 10 would be a good start. 11 is too late as people just hang around for too long and the noise lasts well beyond midnight. Don't know whose idea it was to have benches so close to the flats, but the council could help rectify the problem by taking some of them out. It would help out the Roebuck too as they keep having to tell their punters not to sit there. The notices they keep putting on those benches keep getting ripped up.

markt - if you live in Chadwick Sq (or the properties associated) I would suggest your first port of call should be the management committee. If the management committee can be persuaded that the benches should be removed for the sake of their residents, then they can approach the council with much more weight to ask for them to be removed. They just need to get their heads round the fact that they made a mistake wanting them there in the first place