Emma KnightsA MID-NORFOLK farm shop and caf� wants to extend its opening hours and be allowed to sell alcohol despite objections from some local people.THPD Properties has applied to Breckland Council for a premises licence that would allow it to sell alcohol at the shop and caf� on the Yaxham Waters holiday park site.Emma Knights

A MID-NORFOLK farm shop and caf� wants to extend its opening hours and be allowed to sell alcohol despite objections from some local people.

THPD Properties has applied to Breckland Council for a premises licence that would allow it to sell alcohol at the shop and caf� on the Yaxham Waters holiday park site. The application is to go before Breckland's licensing sub committee on Tuesday.

Pablo Dimoglou, from THPD, said if this is granted the plan is to extend the opening hours of both facilities from Easter so that the farm shop would be open from 7am until 11pm Monday to Friday, and on Sunday from 7am until 10.30pm, and the caf� would be open from 7.30am until 11pm Monday to Friday, and on Sunday from 7.30am until 10.30pm.

He said the application was in response to a number of people asking to buy bottles of wine at the shop and because they would like to offer people the chance to drink alcohol with their meals in the caf�.

The application also asks for permission to have recorded music indoors during the planned new opening hours and Mr Dimoglou said this would be background music for the farm caf�.

He said: 'We are mostly geared up for food and snacks - we won't be seeing ourselves as any sort of pub.'

He added: 'I live on site with my family, and I want to live in a nice environment the same as everyone else. The last thing we want to be is a late night noisy venue.'

A number of letters objecting to the premises application have been sent to Breckland including one from Yaxham Parish Council.

In one letter Karen Willis, of Cutthroat Lane, Yaxham, said allowing the shop and caf� to sell alcohol would encourage drinking and open air parties on the holiday park's camp site, create noise problems and have a 'negative impact on the rural nature of the village,' and she said she would also be concerned for the welfare of her sheep and horses kept nearby.

A letter from the Peters family, also from Cutthroat Lane, said: 'While not wishing to affect the business enterprise at Yaxham Waters, we feel that curtailing the availability of alcohol to either the current opening hours of the farm shop or no later

than 8pm and reasonable restrictions on the playing of recorded

music would be more appropriate to the current peaceful, rural environment.'

THPD has also submitted a retrospective planning application to Breckland Council for the change of use of part of the holiday park to an area to sell caravans and motor homes, and also for permission to put up some fencing.