UK cafe owner wins extractor fan appeal over claims frying bacon offended Muslims

A cafe owner in Britain has won an appeal to keep her extractor fan after her neighbour complained that the smell of frying bacon offended Muslims.

Beverley Akciecek, 49, was ordered to tear down an extractor fan after a neighbour told council bosses his Muslim friends refused to visit his home because of the "foul odour".

Graham Webb-Lee said the smell made them feel "physically sick".

Akciecek and her husband Cetin, 50, who himself is a Turkish Muslim, spent months struggling to pay legal fees and worrying about the future of their business.

Now the planning inspectorate has announced that they can keep the extractor fan at the Snack Shack cafe in Stockport.

The council has been ordered to pay the entire legal bill, which could be as high as £5,000.

"This is a victory for common sense but we shouldn't have been put through this in the first place. We had lots of support from the Muslim community. They were infuriated," the Daily Mail quoted Beverley as saying.

When the couple took over the cafe in 2007, they replaced a worn-out extractor fan with a modern one.

They had not applied for planning permission but after the complaints, were told they had to. They applied retrospectively in May last year but were refused, before their successful appeal.

The Lib Dem-run council originally ruled the smell from the fan, which has been in Bev's Snack Shack for more than three years, was "unacceptable on the grounds of residential amenity" and told her to take it down.

But Beverley and her husband appealed the decision, and after a six-month legal battle, the Planning Inspectorate finally announced they had won their case.

"The council have got to pay our legal fees which is a great relief because we were beginning to struggle. It would have cost us a couple of grand to move it which we just didn't have," she said.

"We would have had to shut down while they were doing it, which would have taken a couple of weeks and it would have been a nightmare.

"This has really taken it out of us as a family. We were like robots, we did everything we had to do but it was always there and it caused us so much stress.

"Now we can just get on with being a normal family," she stated.