Owners close Caythorpe pub after council receives complaints about noise

A village pub has closed its doors after the council received complaints about noise, with several upcoming events now cancelled.

The Waggon & Horses in Caythorpe announced its closure yesterday (Monday, September 20) after having to cancel upcoming events following complaints about their bank holiday fund-raiser.

Over the August bank holiday weekend the pub put on live music for three nights, allowing it to raise more than £300 for the military charity, Help for Heroes.

Following the event, the pub received an email from Environmental Health at South Kesteven District Council earlier this month, stating that they "will oppose any further temporary event notices" and are "considering serving an abatement notice."

After receiving the email, the pub's general manager, Anne Louise Inman, decided to cancel several upcoming gigs that she had booked in to perform across the rest of the year.

She said: "We did a Help the Heroes fund-raiser event as we are all trying to get over the pandemic but we have some serial complainers here in the village."

She continued: "It's not like we have live music very often as we are a village pub, we just do it now and again.

"We've had 18 months of a tough time and we are just trying to give a bit of joy back to the community.

"These are malicious complaints as well, there's nothing behind them, but they always take the neighbours view as gospel.

"Everyone that was here loved it, all three acts were amazing and it's a bank holiday weekend, we do do things like that."

The correspondence from Environmental Health also referred to "the band playing indoors with the door wide open which inevitably had an impact on the neighbours."

Anne added: "We had it open as it's a recommendation to ventilate the area, so they need to make up their minds."

The pub says it also makes sure to take decibel readings during live events to check they are not being too noisy.

A spokesperson for the council has since confirmed that there was no ban on the pub having live events and that they were able to continue applying for licenses where required; however the owner of the pub, Lesley Rann, has now decided to lease the business and the pub will not be re-opening.

Lesley did not wish to comment.