AN artisan pizza van will open in Chipping Sodbury after South Gloucestershire councillors granted a street trading licence, despite a neighbour’s objection.
One Pizza will serve hand-stretched pizzas cooked in a wood-fired oven one evening a week, on either Tuesday or Wednesday, from 5pm to 9pm in Wickwar Road, Chipping Sodbury.
The business, run by cousins Esra Koroglu and Ayse Ozer (pictured above at the licensing hearing), has been trading in Frenchay for over a year.
In May the council’s licensing sub-committee approved applications to extend this to Thornbury High Street and Charfield Memorial Hall car park, while another site is in the Stroud district.
The panel approved the latest location after hearing the licensing authority had received no complaints about any of them.
But one Chipping Sodbury resident wrote in their objection that an existing kebab van in Wickwar Road already caused noise and litter every weekend.
The resident said: “An application for another trader to be located there is just ridiculous.
“We already have a pizza takeaway business at the Italian at the top of the street.
“I am 100% against this application.
“I will also object when the kebab van’s licence is due for renewal.
“Can I suggest that if as a council you want this type of business in the area, you locate them near the clock tower, outside the police station, to encourage the customers to respect the homeowners’ right to peace and quiet but to also encourage these customers to leave the town as soon as possible once they have bought their food.”
A ‘great addition’ to food in Chipping Sodbury
Writing in support of One Pizza, a local independent food business said: “It would be a great addition to the current food offering in Chipping Sodbury and the quality of their food would be a great fit for families in the local area.
“I’d say let them start as soon as possible.”
Mrs Koroglu told the hearing at Kingswood civic centre on July 23, that the van would trade next to the church, opposite a bus stop.
She said: “The road widens there because of the bus stop, so therefore there will still be plenty of room for two cars to get past.
“There is already a trader there regularly in the evenings and there are no issues with cars passing by.”
Mrs Koroglu said the business had been well-received by customers.
She said: “So far, so good. We haven’t had any complaints from the locations, and some people who had objected met us when we were trading and they tried our pizzas and they left happy.
“We would be a really good addition to the town.
“There are some eateries there but we are bringing something positive, nice and fresh and bringing up the quality of the street trading food.”
Mrs Koroglu said they had applied for two days at Chipping Sodbury to give flexibility if anything needed to change but that they only operated one evening a week at each of their sites.
She said they did not provide any seating and encouraged customers to pre-order so that they turned up and left as soon as possible to go home to eat their food.
By Adam Postans, Local Democracy Reporting Service