A South London café can sell booze and host live music in the evenings despite neighbours' fears it could fuel further noise and antisocial behaviour on their road.

People living close to Old London Road Café, in Kingston, claimed they are already disturbed by customers from other town centre venues and raised concerns this would get worse if a new licence was granted.

Kingston Council's licensing committee decided to grant the licence for the venue, on Old London Road, after a hearing on August 29.

Bernard Kuhn, a local resident, told the hearing the café had always been quiet and not caused issues, but he feared hosting live music would result in "increased noise" with customers "opening the doors, standing outside smoking, et cetera". He also claimed serving booze would "cause additional antisocial behaviour".

Mr Kuhn said noise and antisocial behaviour from customers was "an issue already for other venues in the area". 

He said: "We are affected in our sleep when people come out at 10pm, 11pm at night, it is very noisy, and we even had to change our windows to make sure we had less noise from the road."

Another resident Hussam Nasreddin raised concerns customers would "hang around" after the café closed and add to existing antisocial behaviour in the area. He said his family was "suffering" and his three-year-old had not "been sleeping well for the past year because of the issues".

He said: "We all know the issues that exist at the moment, particularly around serving alcohol. People will be leaving the venue, they will be screaming – even normal chatter while they are drunk is really disturbing to us."

He added: "We are extremely concerned at adding another venue, although it's not going to be represented as a bar or as a nightclub, but it will still attract the same crowd that will actually be performing antisocial behaviours."

Applicant Ricardo Cardoso, operations manager at Lightning Bolt Entertainment Ltd, said the café would not turn into another nightclub or pub with the licence, but that it would be a space for community events including board games, poetry and crochet.

He said the licence would allow the café to "provide alcoholic beverages for people that wish to have them whilst they are enjoying the activities".

Mr Cardoso added the venue planned to host open mic nights with unamplified music which would only take place around once a month on Saturday evenings from around 8pm to 10pm, and there would not usually be any activities after this time. He said events like board games would not be noisy, and the application was not "trying to turn the place into a bar, which was the major concern for residents". The capacity of the venue is 40 people.

Hospitality and leisure consultant Matt Barnwell, representing the applicant, said there was antisocial behaviour on the road on Friday and Saturday nights, but that it was "very difficult to unpick where that issue may or may not come from" as the town centre was so busy.

He said the application should be considered separately to licences held by other local venues.

Mr Barnwell said: "There's no reason to believe that the proposed café wouldn't comply with its conditions and trading hours. In terms of noise emanating from there, there wouldn't be a noise risk from there under the proposed operating schedule."

Mr Barnwell encouraged residents to report any antisocial behaviour to the café so staff could make sure their customers were not responsible and that, if they were, they would deal with the issue.

The committee went on to grant the licence after ruling conditions in the application were "robust" and addressed councillors' concerns about public nuisance and noise.

The conditions include creating a noise management plan with measures to mitigate potential disturbance, while live music must be acoustic.

It means the café has permission to sell booze and host live acoustic music from 12pm to 10.30pm every day, and to close at 11pm.