A HEREFORD college has apologised to neighbours over noisy parties and will no longer hold events at one of its former buildings.

The Royal National College for the Blind until last week had permission to sell alcohol Monday to Friday from 11am to midnight and also host music and other functions at Gardner Hall and The Point 4 on Venns Lane.

But following complaints they applied for a variation of their licence to no longer apply to Gardner Hall.

Herefordshire Council’s licensing sub-committee was set to reconsider their licence last week following noise complaints from residents in Admirals Close but given the variation they decided no further action was required.

An officer’s report said music continued to play past midnight on June 29 and the DJ was heard to say, “OK, just one more” before playing Neil Diamond’s song Sweet Caroline.

Officers said a statutory noise nuisance took place and served a notice on the venue which lead to the current licence review.

Residents said they have suffered loud music and obnoxious behaviour coming from the venue including shouting a swearing into the early hours of the morning.

“We have two children that have been subjected to this anti-social behaviour as a result of the consumption of alcohol outside,” one resident said.

“We feel that this is unacceptable in a residential area.”

College commercial manager Christopher Combe apologised to residents for the disturbance the parties had caused.

“Over the last several years the events we have held events there have mostly gone unnoticed,” he said.

He said Gardner Hall had hosted a large event last year which cause considerable disruption.

“We put into place numerous actions to stop that and for the last year in the main we resolved all of those issues but on this particular event we didn’t,” he added.

“I sincerely apologise on behalf of our staff for that event.”

He said the only licensible activities going forward would be for The Point 4 which is used as a student bar which is not open to the public. Any external events would have to have a temporary events notice.