A COCKTAIL bar banned from playing music after complaints from furious neighbours has installed noise-cancelling equipment to help them continue putting on events.

Twelve Brunch and Cocktails, in Southend’s Clifftown Road, was banned from playing any amplified music on the premises back in April after the music was ruled “prejudicial to health.”

Operations director Mark Landon said the “impact on the business has been immeasurable,” but that the cocktail bar has developed “a new model to adapt .”

This new model has included opening a restaurant in the basement and switching focus to cocktail brunches rather than late-night partying.

“We’ve been working closely with the environmental health department to understand the amplification of the premises, under the new management we have engaged to understand what could be done,” Mr Landon said.

Mr Landon added that the business has brought in an acoustic engineer to understand the impact on neighbours and the ambient noise within the venue, allowing them to play music but not create a nuisance.

“We’ve done another study to see music being played and we were able to work out the nuisance levels,” Mr Landon added.

“We’ve had to prove under temporary events notice from since September that they have been running to see if this can happen, we’ve engaged with them again and the council have had no complaints thus far, so we’ve been playing music since September.”

Mr Landon insisted the brunches and basement restaurant have already proved a huge success.

“We want to power on with this new model, we are busier than ever because we’ve been allowed to come back and we’ve been supported by a lot of brunches,” Mr Landon said.

“The new license is only playing amplified music until 1am in the morning, so we are more late-night cocktail club than nightclub.”

Twelve Brunch and Cocktails is continuing to put on bottomless brunch specials through October and November and hope to prove to Southend council that their measures have been successful in November.