Fined for queueing ?

Customers at a seaside fish and chip restaurant could face £50 fines in a long-running dispute over queues outside, its owner said.

Ian Robson, owner of Whitby's Magpie Cafe, was told by police his customers could get fixed penalty notices if they were deemed to be obstructing the road.

His neighbours claim customers waiting for a table are obscuring the front of their shops, causing a drop in trade.

Mr Robson said the dispute has been running for a couple of years.

"No-one can come up with a reasonable solution," he said. "We've always had queues for as long as I can remember, and I don't know what in particular sparked off the last couple of years, but we've upset our neighbours."In an experiment in conjunction with the highways authority we started to operate a system where people queued on the other side of the road and were then brought over by a member of staff when their table was ready.

"But on Bank Holiday Sunday we had a couple of instances of near-misses with cars so we thought it was safer to go back to the old system."Within half an hour of doing that, the police were here."They said if we didn't move the queue back over the road the customers would be given fixed penalty notices for obstructing the road outside."

The cafe, which opened in Whitby in 1939, can attract more than 1,000 customers a day at the height of the tourist season and has recently been extended to accommodate 130 customers.

A North Yorkshire Police spokesman said: "A fixed penalty ticket is an option available to the police, but we are working with the management of the Magpie Cafe, the local highways authority, Scarborough Borough Council and other partner agencies to achieve a more acceptable and permanent solution.

"This is the option we want to pursue to deal with this problem."