Court overturns Rochester Tesco refusal
Two years of licensing drama, another future for Spembly Works, museum visits, and more
It took two applications, objections, a licensing hearing, a council refusal, and an appeal to the Magistrates’ Court, but Tesco has finally secured permission to sell alcohol from its planned Rochester store. Elsewhere, there are fresh plans for Spembly Works, an unexpected cannabis delivery in Gillingham, a sharp fall in Guildhall Museum visitors, and lots more.
Court overturns Rochester Tesco refusal
Tesco has finally received a premises licence for a new store in Rochester, two years after it first applied.
The company first applied for an alcohol licence for a Tesco Express store at Pullman House on Corporation Street, next to the station, in November 2024. Since then, the process has included the original application, objections, a withdrawal, a fresh application with reduced hours, a full licensing hearing, a refusal from Medway Council, and now an appeal to the Magistrates' Court.
All of that effort was to reach the point where a Tesco Express is allowed to sell alcohol until 9pm.
Medway Council has confirmed that Tesco has now received a licence following a trip to court.
A spokesperson for the council told Local Authority: “Following the refusal of the application by the Licensing hearing panel on 15 April 2025, Tesco submitted an appeal to Medway Magistrates Court, where they were granted a premises licence.”
The licence now issued by the council allows Tesco to sell alcohol from 10am to 9pm from Sunday to Thursday, and from 10am until 8pm on Fridays ans Saturdays.
Those hours are the same ones that Medway Council refused last year.
This saga began in November 2024, when Tesco initially applied for a licence to sell alcohol from 6am until midnight every day. On paper, a small supermarket next to a railway station in a town centre with fairly limited grocery provision might seem like one of the less complicated proposals imaginable.
But this is Medway, of course.
Rochester High Street and the surrounding area sit within a Cumulative Impact Area, where the council considers there to be significant problems caused by the number of premises selling alcohol. As a result, that first application attracted objections from Public Health, Kent Police, local residents, and members of the Rochester City Centre Forum.
At the time, Medway Council's own public health team argued that Rochester already had unacceptable levels of alcohol-related crime associated with the density of off-licences. Before that application could be heard in January 2025, Tesco withdrew it.
It then returned with something considerably more modest, offering to sell alcohol from 10am each day, and no later than 8pm or 9pm depending on the day of the week. That application still attracted objections and was heard by Medway Council's Licensing Hearing Panel on in April 2025.
Tesco turned up with a solicitor, a licensing consultant, an operations manager and its head of licensing to explain why allowing it to sell alcohol for part of the day would not, in fact, bring Rochester to its knees.
The company said alcohol represented a small proportion of its overall sales and outlined policies covering age checks, staff training, CCTV and security. It offered restrictions on stronger products and the sale of individual cans.
By this point, Kent Police no longer objected. Public Health remained opposed, arguing that Rochester continued to experience crime, antisocial behaviour, begging, public nuisance and problems associated with street drinking.
During questioning, its representative acknowledged that some of the crime data used approximate locations and could not establish precisely which incidents had taken place around the proposed premises.
One of the more revealing arguments during the hearing established the obvious point that even if Tesco could control what happened inside its own store, it could not control what customers did with alcohol after leaving.
That is certainly true, although it also presents a problem unless Medway Council's position is that it will now never grant an alcohol sales licence to any establishment.
Medway's panel ultimately decided that Tesco had failed to demonstrate the "exceptional circumstances" required to justify granting a new licence within Rochester's Cumulative Impact Area.
While the panel accepted that Tesco was a large, experienced operator with established procedures for managing alcohol sales, it concluded that none of those factors made an exceptional case. As such, the licence was refused.
We revisited the case earlier this year when looking at what Medway's licensing decisions say about its priorities, contrasting the hard line taken against Tesco with granting a licence for a bar to stay open until 4am in Strood.
Corporation Street is supposed to be part of Rochester's regeneration. Pullman House was built with commercial units at the ground floor level beneath new homes, right beside one of Medway's busiest railway stations. Meanwhile, Rochester itself still does not exactly suffer from an excess of grocery provision.
Somehow, getting a small supermarket into one of those units, with the ability to sell someone a bottle of wine after work, has taken nearly two years of paperwork, objections, hearings, and eventually a trip to court.
When Medway Council refused the application last year, we wondered what more Tesco could have done to satisfy the council.
It turns out the answer was to take it to court.
Catch Up
This week took us from twenty years of grassroots gigs to Sikh heritage, poetry and gardens, before ending up with someone once again wondering whether the Great Lines could become a giant music venue.
Anthony Martin started Antfest in 2006 after the death of a friend’s father. 20 years later, the charity gigs he has organised have raised more than £100,000 and put hundreds of bands on stages around Medway and beyond. Steven spoke to him about the local music scene, VLOOKUPs, Rage Against the Latrine and why he still has around 200 copies of his debut album sitting in his garage.
Steven Keevil
Our September Culture Review ranges from Sikh heritage at Medway Little Theatre and poetry at Chatham Library to Iain Lee, open gardens and more. As ever, we sent our reviewers out around Medway to see what was actually worth your time.
Local Authority
Then there is the Great Lines, where another promoter wants to stage major music events for crowds of up to 20,000 people. Others have had similar ideas and produced rather more licensing paperwork than actual music, but this applicant is linked to the company behind Rochester Castle Live, so this one might actually happen.
Ed Jennings
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In brief
🏚️ Future Medway reports that fresh plans are being drawn up to restore the long-derelict Spembly Works in Chatham into flats, after a new owner took control of the site earlier this year. RedDoor Homes boss Andy Wicking is behind the proposals, although 'fresh' is doing some work here given Wicking has been involved with companies connected to Spembly Works for several years.
🏡 A plot of land with planning permission for 88 homes off Maidstone Road in Hempstead is up for sale for £6m.
📦 A Gillingham resident had several bags of cannabis were accidentally delivered to their home. A man claiming to be from the delivery company then repeatedly turned up trying to retrieve the parcel, but the resident refused and eventually called the police instead.
☕ Gillingham railway station has a new independent coffee shop, with Flying Bean Café opening its first site on the Southeastern network.
🏛️ In news no one could have possibly seen coming, visitors to the Guildhall Museum have plummeted from 60,000 to 22,000 per year since admission charges were introduced.
🚧 Medway Council is tendering for a new £110m highways infrastructure contract. The contract will run from 2027 to 2034, when the current agreement with Volker Highways expires.
Council matters
Meetings next week:
- Tuesday: Licensing Hearing Panel will meet to decide the fate of a convenience store on Richmond Road in Gillingham.
- Thursday: Children and Young People Overview and Scrutiny Committee meets to discuss reforms to children's services, SEND, youth justice, and more.
New planning applications:
- New care home on former St John Fisher school land in Chatham.
Property of the week
This former hotel on London Road in Strood is on the market for £875,000, offering six bedrooms, five bathrooms, 5,400 sq ft and the unmistakable sense that a group of men have been left unsupervised inside it for several years. The grand old rooms contain fireplaces, sash windows and high ceilings, but also gym equipment and a table tennis table in one of the reception rooms and action figures dotted around the place. Best of all is the 360-degree viewing tower on the roof, which could have been an artist’s studio or a peaceful place to admire the Medway skyline, but instead seems to contain an Xbox and television. There is something rather admirable about acquiring a huge former hotel and gradually turning it into the house you would have designed when you were 14.
Events this week
🤼 Sat 26 Sep - UKPW // Wrestling action returns with an even bigger show. Chatham Historic Dockyard. Tickets from £12.
🎸 Sat 26 Sep - Second Chance Medway Benefit Concert // The Singing Loins, Theatre Royal, Little Storping in the Swuff, and others play to support food aid this Christmas. Three Sheets to the Wind, Rochester. Donations for Charity
🗣️ Thu 1 Oct - Medway Matters Live // Chance to put questions directly to the council leader and chief executive. Strood Sports Centre. Free.
Footnotes
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