Plan to reopen troubled Muswell Hill nightclub the Socialite Bar sparks social media row

A row has erupted over a bid to reopen a bar at the same location where a shooting and knife attack took place.

The Socialite Bar closed following a police review of the premises after a 22 year-old man was shot in the face outside the Muswell Hill nightspot in November 2016.

And in January four men ended up in hospital after being stabbed by a knifeman outside the venue.

Fears have now been raised by a licence application for a new bar looking to open until 4am on Fridays and Saturdays at the site in 272 Muswell Hill Broadway.

A mother from a nearby flat, who asked not to be named, says noise and anti-social behaviour from Broadway bars keep her children awake at night.

“My child wakes up crying at two, three, four o’clock in the morning. I’m really upset. Every weekend people urinate outside your door. I’m terrified,” she said.

From the window of her flat overlooking Broadway the woman said she had witnessed three men lay into a victim after leaving another pub.

“I don’t want to leave Muswell Hill. It’s the only place I know. People living outside Broadway can’t understand how it is to not be able to sleep or open the windows on a summer night,” she said. She calling on the council to throw out the new bar owner’s bid to close at 4am.

But others on social media have welcomed the application.

They say that saying youngsters need somewhere in the area to go out at night and the new owners should not be ‘tarnished with the same brush’.

There were also calls for enhanced security measures like CCTV to be a condition of opening the new premises in Broadway.

A spokesman for Rare Technology, which has submitted the new application for the former Socialite Bar site, said he did not wish to comment on the plans or the objections.