Cake company fails in noise case

Some 1,200 people are employed at the Cardiff plant

A cake factory given a council notice to reduce noise after residents' complaints has failed in an attempt to challenge it in the High Court.

Memory Lane Cakes said the £50,000 cost of complying would "seriously impact" its ability to continue operating at its site at Heath, Cardiff.

It said it was unfair it had to cut noise for new residents on what had been an industrial estate for decades.

But the judge refused the company permission to seek a judicial review.

The company had also argued there would have been no problem, had the new apartments been fitted with proper sound-proofing.

But Mr Justice Mitting said the company had no right to go to the High Court and should have first appealed against the decision before magistrates.

It was now too late for this course to be pursued, the court in London heard.

'Wrong decision'

Memory Lane Cakes, which has operated at Maes y Coed Road since the 1940s, was served with a noise abatement notice by Cardiff Council in August last year, the court heard.

It followed complaints from residents at a new development of apartments on the site of a former munitions factory.

Emyr Gweirydd Jones, for Memory Lane Cakes, told the court the council's decision to serve and refuse to withdraw the notice was wrong as the environmental health officer who visited the site had taken readings from the south of the factory.

The north side was where the residents who had complained live.

Mr Jones said: "The complaints were made by residents not because there was an increase in noise but because the residents were occupying land which historically had not housed dwellings."

Referring to a recent residential development to the west of where the claimants lived, he said planning conditions had been imposed to ensure residents were not subjected to unacceptable noise levels.

'Disappointed'

"The bakery has been in existence since the 1940s and the neighbourhood in general has been subject to manufacture and industry for decades," he told the court.

"The approach of the council to the imposition of the abatement notice is wrong in principle and if repeated would make Memory Lane Cakes vulnerable to all sorts of complaints which would have a serious impact on its ability to operate from the existing premises."

Mr Jones had also argued the company was unaware of their right to appeal to magistrates and that the council had a duty to make them aware of that right.

Mr Justice Mitting ordered the company, which has its headquarters in London, to pay more than £1,100 in legal costs.

Following the court hearing, Memory Lane chief executive Dave Brooks said the company was disappointed with the court judgment and the attitude of Cardiff Council but the factory's future was not in jeopardy.

Sound-proofing should have been built into the housing development, he added, and there was no guarantee spending £50,000 on the factory would solve the problem.