Covent Garden family run restaurant to relocate after hotel plans agreed to improve access

A family-run Italian restaurant is to move from its Covent Garden home after plans to turn the space into a hotel reception and café were approved.

Pasta Brown, which has occupied the same premises on Bedford Street since the 1980s, previously said its future ‘hangs in the balance’ if it has to relocate.

The applicant, Z Hotels, has however said an offer has been made to the restaurant to support it moving into a new premises and to extend its current lease by a year, currently due to expire on December 24.

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Pasta Brown is on the ground floor of a seven-storey building primarily occupied by Z Hotels. The company owns the site, and was looking to reconfigure the premises to enable guests to access the hotel from its Bedford Street frontage. Currently they enter via a smaller side-street, which is privately owned by a neighbouring church.

In its submission, Z Hotels also detailed how the change will enable it to add a further seven bedrooms to the rear of the building, taking its total to 120. The reception and café would move into the space used by Pasta Brown and would retain the existing shopfront.

At a Westminster City Council Planning Applications Sub-Committee meeting last night (November 12), the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Z Hotels Bev King said the premise of the submission is to improve access. He outlined the support he has offered Pasta Brown, with whom he said he has a ‘good relationship’.

“The restaurant is a very successful business,” he said, “but I genuinely believe it would be equally successful if it was relocated to another property on the street.”

A solicitor speaking on behalf of Pasta Brown requested councillors either defer or refuse the application, and posited it would result in harm to the conservation area among other concerns.

Some time was spent discussing a petition objecting to the planning submission which had not been brought to the committee’s attention in the meeting pack.

The crux of the councillors' questions however focussed on whether the concerns around Pasta Brown constituted a planning consideration.

Conservative councillor Laila Cunningham suggested the images shown of the proposed café indicated it would preserve the appearance and setting of the building.

She also raised that permission is not required to end a tenancy agreement, with a council officer confirming even if the application was refused, Z Hotels could bring another operator into the space.

Cllr Ryan Jude (Labour) similarly put to the committee that while the petition showed a high level of public support for Pasta Brown, members needed to consider the application in planning terms.

“Right now…if the building owners Z Hotels wanted to, they could evict the restaurant and put their own café in right now on the current floorplate?,” he asked. “There’s nothing to stop them doing that?” Officers confirmed this to be the case.

Cllr Cunningham later added: “I don’t see any planning issues here. I only see actually an increase in business and revenue to the council and a new business.”

The application was agreed unanimously despite the future relocation of Pasta Brown deemed to be 'regrettable'. Details about Z Hotels’ offer of support to Pasta Brown are also to be included in an informative for the applicant as part of the approval.

Following the meeting, Mr King told the LDRS he has instructed his lawyer to offer Pasta Brown the lease extension, and is committed to helping them find a new premises. His frustration, he added, was that the application took so long to be decided, having been validated by the council in January.

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