Paramount Place licence bid: comments close 7 September

The retirement village going up on the old cinema site has applied for a premises licence, and the town has until Monday 7 September to say anything about it. The application, reference 26/03247/LAPRE, names the premises as Paramount Place in Park ward, was received on 27 July and was validated on 10 August, which is when the 28-day public notice period started running. As at 13 August, when the council last extracted its register, nobody had made a representation. (Licensing Partnership premises licence tracker, extracted 13 August 2026)

The LAPRE suffix on the reference matters. It marks a brand new premises licence rather than a change of designated premises supervisor at somewhere that is already licensed, so this is the licence a new venue needs before it can sell alcohol or put on regulated entertainment. The register’s own detail page for the application is not available to view, so the tracker is the public record of it, and the tracker does not publish which licensable activities or hours have been applied for. Anyone who wants that detail has to ask the licensing team, or read the notice the applicant is required to display.

What Paramount Place is

Paramount Place is Retirement Villages Group’s development at the top of Mount Pleasant Road, on the site of the cinema that stood empty for years before it came down. The company’s own account of the scheme says it “will bring 167 apartments, retail spaces, and a vibrant community to the heart of the town”. (Retirement Villages Group)

The part that concerns anyone who does not live there is the ground floor. The developer’s facilities page lists a café, a restaurant and bar under the name Yarrow, with courtyard seating, and says they are “open to residents and the public alike”. It also lists ALUNA, a wellbeing club with a hydrotherapy pool, treatment rooms and a studio, opening in October, “open to residents and a limited number of memberships open to the wider community”, plus street-level shops and a landscaped courtyard the company says will host farmers markets and cinema evenings. (Retirement Villages Group, facilities)

That is what makes a licence application here more than housekeeping. A retirement village with a bar and restaurant open to the public is, for licensing purposes, a town-centre venue like any other, on a street that already runs from the Town Hall down to Royal Victoria Place.

The site’s long gap

The cinema opened as the Ritz on 3 December 1934, showed its final films on Sunday 29 October 2000, and was demolished in late summer 2014. (Cinema Treasures) A licence application for a bar on that plot is the first sign in a quarter of a century that something on it will serve the public again.

The only other application open for comment

Paramount Place is one of just two applications in the borough currently inside their public notice window. The other is Flamevilla, the peri-peri takeaway at 88 Camden Road, whose new premises licence application sits in St James’ ward with a closing date of 3 September and, likewise, no representations recorded. Everything else on the tracker has either been issued, suspended or has passed its date. (Licensing Partnership premises licence tracker)

What it means for you

If you want to comment, the date is 7 September and the form is writing. Anyone may make a representation on an application that is open to consultation, it “must be made in writing and received by the closing date shown”, and the council is explicit about the trade-off: “Your name and address will be published, however your signature, email address and telephone number will not. Your name and address may appear in internet search results.” Tunbridge Wells applications are handled by the Licensing Partnership at the Council Offices, Argyle Road, Sevenoaks TN13 1HG, on 01732 227004 or licensing@sevenoaks.gov.uk. (Sevenoaks District Council, comment on a licensing application; premises licence contact details)

Make it about one of the four licensing objectives if you want it to count. Under section 4 of the Licensing Act 2003 a licensing authority must carry out its functions with a view to promoting the prevention of crime and disorder, public safety, the prevention of public nuisance, and the protection of children from harm. A comment that engages with one of those, noise late at night, say, or deliveries on a residential street, is doing something a general objection cannot. (Licensing Act 2003, section 4)

If you live or work nearby, the notice should be up. Government guidance is that an applicant “must display your ‘application notice’ at or on the premises for 28 days from the day after it was submitted”, so the terms being applied for should be readable on the hoarding or the building without asking anyone. (GOV.UK, premises licence)

If you are waiting to use the place rather than object to it, the developer’s pages point to a late 2026 opening, with ALUNA listed for October. It is running open days at its marketing suite, opposite the site at 62 Mount Pleasant Road, from 10am to 2pm on 27 October and 3 December, on 01892 313401. (Retirement Villages Group, discovery days)

If you are following what else is being built in the town, our Tunbridge Wells planning news page tracks what is submitted and decided across the borough, and the cafés, bars and days out already open are in our guide to things to do in Tunbridge Wells.