COUNCILLORS have granted a licence for a new bar at Thornton’s South Square Centre.

The Cobbles Bar opened in South Square in Summer 2017, but earlier this year the group that runs the centre -

Thornton and Allerton Community Association, applied for a new, altered licence for the unit it occupied.

It would make the community group licensees of the bar, and allow them to alter its layout - removing the licence from the upper floor are but extending the bar to a neighbouring unit in the listed centre.

The premises would be run by Gareth Abraham.

The application went before Bradford Council’s District Licensing Panel yesterday, when members voted to approve the new licence.

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They heard there had been one objection from a resident of Thornton who said the bar would "take the life and soul out of the community."

They also raised concerns about noise from the bar.

However, representatives from the committee told the panel that the venue would merely be replacing a bar that had already been operating for over two years.

The building is made up of a dozen 1820s workers’ cottages surrounding a courtyard, and was saved, re-purposed as a community facility and re-opened in the 1980s.

It now hosts art exhibitions, concerts, community events and is home to a number of businesses.