THE owner of a cafe who wants to extend its opening hours is trying to placate his neighbours by giving up his right to sell alcohol.

Stavros Nicola won permission last year to sell alcohol seven days a week from The Bungalow Café in Wanstead, despite more than 50 of his neighbours writing to Redbridge Council with fears over noise and disturbance.

Neighbours of the cafe in Spratt Hall Road have also long complained about the nuisance caused by customers’ cars blocking them into their driveways and obstructing traffic.

Mr Nicola, 40, now wants to extend the closing time from 3pm to 9.30pm six days a week, and his concession over alcohol sales has not allayed his neighbours’ fears.

Mary Wade, 70, of Greenstone Mews, said: “It’s a good thing that he won’t be selling drink, of course, but the problems with parking will still carry on.

“It can only get worse because the café will be open later than it was and it is already a complete nightmare.

“We have vans, lorries, cars, everything parking dangerously on the corners and even across people’s drives.”

Marjorie Gadd, of Spratt Hall Road, said: “At the moment it’s too cold for people to sit outside.

“I’m more worried about the summer when people are outside into the evenings and the disturbance this will cause us in the road.

“The fact that he’s not going to sell alcohol is a step in the right direction.”

The cafe hit the headlines at the end of last year when Julian Assange, the founder of the controversial website Wikileaks, was taken there for breakfast by his lawyer, Mark Stephens, who lives around the corner in Wanstead.

But it is more local controversy that Mr Nicola hopes to diffuse.

He said: “I want them to understand that I have made sacrifices to please them.

“What I’m trying to say is that I want to be able to run my business without making anyone’s life harder than it already is.”