Corby's new McDonald's drive-thru given permission to serve at all hours

Corby’s new McDonald’s drive-thru will be serving 24 hours despite concerns raised by nearby residents.

This morning (March 9) Corby Council’s licensing panel granted the premises licence to the fast food drive-thru which opened last week at the Southern Gateway complex off the A6003.

Before the meeting some residents living near to the retail complex – which is due to have a Costa coffee and Domino's open there soon – had sent emails to the council objecting to the drive-thru serving burgers and drinks through the night because of anti-social behaviour fears.

They said they feared a 24 hour-opening would create a noise nuisance and encourage teenagers to use the area as a late night hang-out.

But lawyer Leo Charalambides, representing the world’s biggest hamburger franchise, addressed all of the concerns at this morning’s licensing hearing and said the authority should grant the licence because residents living nearby at Colliers Field were ‘voicing anxieties’ rather than evidence.

The lawyer said the franchise Kyra Enterprises had successfully operated two McDonald’s franchises in the town for decades and that a whole series of measures had been put in place to ensure the new drive-thru would not impact negatively on the nearby community.

He said there is a full time groundsman employed, plus 24-hour CCTV, a comprehensive litter cleaning policy and staff were trained to deal with customers who parked up and played loud music.

He said: “In terms of litter, it is McDonald’s policy to clean up all litter.

“We have full CCTV coverage. We will get your number plates if you are illegally parked or racing because we don’t want you on our site.

“We cooperate with a whole variety of local initiatives including litter picks because we realise we need to be part of the community.”

He added: “We want our store to be attractive to the local community so we don’t want noisy cars; we don’t want loitering; we don’t want litter, we don’t want people acting in an anti-social way.”

The council’s licensing panel agreed to grant the premises licence with the authorisation of late night refreshments through from 11pm to 5am.

The reason given for approval was that the panel was content with measures suggested by McDonald’s to ward off anti-social behaviour near the site. An additional clause that the company would share any wanted CCTV footage with the authorty’s officers as well as the police was added in.

The panel made a point of addressing concerns of local residents and said that there is an option of licensing review if down the line the franchise was not meeting its obligations.