Lyme Regis Council Ordered to Repay Restaurants After 14 Years of Overcharging

Larry Gibbons has arranged the same seven tables and 30 chairs outside Largigi Cafe on Marine Parade every season since 2009. Each year, Lyme Regis Town Council invoiced him £600 per table for the right to do it. He is now owed more than £50,000 back, and is still waiting.

Gibbons, 72, is the most prominent of 11 Marine Parade businesses entitled to refunds after Dorset Council confirmed in late 2025 that the seafront street is a public highway in its entirety, a designation that rendered 14 years of town council licensing charges legally indefensible.

The arithmetic is punishing. At £600 per table annually, Largigi's bill reached £4,200 a year, more than twelve times the £350 renewal fee capped by the Business and Planning Act 2020. Tom Robinson, chef and owner of Tom's Lyme Regis seafood restaurant, was paying £3,500 a year. Across all 11 businesses, charges stretch back to 2012, and the total refund liability runs to tens of thousands of pounds, drawn from the town council's reserves of approximately £1 million.

The error traces to a 2011 agreement between Lyme Regis Town Council and the predecessor authorities of Dorset Council, intended to formalise management of Marine Parade. The town council misread it as conferring ownership of the pavements. Town Clerk John Wright has since acknowledged the mistake: "We think we've acted in good faith, historically. We realise now there was an error, we put our hands up to it."

Smaller claims have already been settled. Gibbons' has not. The council has requested 15 years of bank statements to verify his payments, a demand he finds bewildering. "Surely they know how much I have paid them over the years," he said. He also pointed to the wider regulatory failure: "Every other council appears to be adhering to the law, including Westminster City Council. Lyme Regis council didn't feel the law applied to them."

Robinson offered a more measured response, telling Radio Solent's Dorset breakfast show that the council had "acted very swiftly and professionally" once the error came to light. "There are pinches in hospitality at the moment and we could really do with the money so we are very happy."

The overcharging ran through the most financially brutal stretch UK hospitality has faced in decades, encompassing pandemic closures, energy bill spikes, National Insurance rises, and minimum wage increases. On Marine Parade, those pressures compounded year after year alongside a fee that was already illegal on the day it was first issued.

Going forward, Dorset Council takes over pavement licensing on Marine Parade. Any operator currently paying a town or parish council directly for outdoor seating permits should pull the original licence documentation and confirm with the relevant county or unitary authority whether the pavement in question is a classified public highway. If it is, the national fee cap applies, regardless of what any local arrangement appears to authorise.