An elderly couple’s objection to a Hungry Jacks store at Sunshine opening two hours earlier has been rejected by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
The Ballarat Road store applied for a permit to open at 6am rather than the standard 8.30am, arguing there was high demand for breakfasts in the area.
Brimbank council approved the permit in June last year, although the opening time for the store was revised to 6.30am.
A 2.4-metre acoustic fence must also be installed under conditions of the permit.
However, Stan Lechucki, on behalf of his parents who live behind the takeaway restaurant and drive-through, contested the permit, arguing Hungry Jacks had a “long history of non-compliance”.
He said truck deliveries and after hours’ waste collection, staff leaving late at night and “occasional damage” to a boundary fence had greatly affected his parents.
He added that the council had failed to respond to his complaints.
At the February 12 hearing, VCAT member Geoffrey Rundell found that an earlier opening time would provide “community benefits”.
“I think it provides benefits to the community and creates little risk or adverse impacts for the neighbours or the wider community,” he said.
Expert acoustic evidence revealed the current fence “has no acoustic value”, and there had been no testing of noise from delivery and waste trucks.
Mr Rundell said the case was “somewhat unusual in that it is uncommon to find a collection of restaurants so close together”.
“While the tribunal has great sympathy for the residents, refusing to grant a permit in this case is not necessarily in their best interests,” he said.
“The present application obviously provides an opportunity to improve the present situation … it needs to be remembered that if the tribunal refuses a permit, there is nothing to prevent the existing situation from continuing in a similar way to its conduct in the past.
“The grant of a permit will, in the tribunal’s view, certainly result in an overall improvement to the present situation.”
