Tuesday November 20th 2018
The new McDonald’s at Hardengreen has been granted it’s licence to open 24 hours a day.
In it’s planning application McDonald’s had said that it had wanted to open 24 hours. However, once the planning permission was granted it still had to apply for a licence to open between the hours of 23:00 and 04:00. Which it did at the start of October.
The local Community Council for the area, Eskbank and Newbattle, only found out about the extended hours application the day before the four week consultation period was to close and then it was only by chance. It used to be the practice that Civic licences such as these were advertised in the local newspaper, however due to budget constraints at the council Midlothian Council this is no longer done.
Residents were also concerned that the application had already been approved when McDonald’s erected their 24 hour sign just off the A7 roundabout at Hardengreen.
The chair of the Community Council, Bill Kerr-Smith, successfully appealed that they be allowed to object and so in a private meeting held today the Community Council and a limited number of residents who were allowed to attend were given the opportunity to object.
At the meeting the licence was approved.
Most other McDonald’s have to close overnight but locally both the restaurants at Straition and Kinnaird Park have 24 hour licenses. Having already granted two 24 hour licenses it was unlikely that Midlothian Council would have been able to refuse the Hardengreen application.
The McDonald’s restaurant is due to open in early December.
At the planning meeting today, where planning permission for Drive Thru restaurants on the adjacent site for both KFC and Starbucks was refused, Councillors said they expect traffic and parking chaos in the area as shoppers head to both Tesco and McDonald’s.
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