A NEW McDonald’s restaurant in a retail park notorious for boy racers and antisocial behaviour will be allowed to stay open until 5am.

The new fast food restaurant being built at Turner Rise Retail Park, Colchester, was granted a premises licence for late night refreshments between 11pm and 5am at a Colchester Council meeting.

Residents have complained to the police over noise from cars and motorbikes at Turner Rise as recently as last weekend, according to one councillor.

The restaurant will have to hold quarterly meetings with residents and councillors and provide them with the duty manager’s phone number in order to keep abreast of any issues, as a condition of its new licence.

At a licensing meeting councillor David Harris said the opening licence was granted with “heavy conditions” imposed by the council.

Representing the applicant, barrister Gary Grant said the McDonald’s clients were likely to be late shift workers such as doctors or police officers rather than clubbers and that number platerecognising ticketing had helped reduce the problem of boy racers in the past.

He said: “My client has a vested commercial interest in ensuring customers at night can attend this McDonald’s without having to travel through a war zone or indeed Silverstone.”

Turner Rise was subject to a public space protection order banning car meets in 2015. This year, the council has introduced a borough-wide PSPO for three years giving police the power to fine rule-breakers £100.

Nonetheless, the application received a series of objections from nearby residents, concerned the new McDonald’s could worsen the problem.

One read: “The retail park is a well known hot-spot for night time issues – the area was previously under a PSPO (the first in the country, I believe) to prevent boy racer activity and more recently Turner Rise residents have been plagued with noise from motorbikes racing and revving at night there.”

Among the representations was councillor Martin Goss who also spoke at the meeting against the licence.

He said while McDonald’s in Colchester does good community work and has listened to previous concerns about litter, he and the police were continuing to receive complaints from residents.