The Met Police has warned against a Richmond restaurant and takeaway being allowed to open late at night and said the venue had previously served food past closing time.

Chicago Grill has applied to stay open until 2am, between Thursday and Saturday, and until 1am, Sundays to Wednesdays.

The application has faced backlash from residents as the venue is in Richmond's Cumulative Impact Zone (CIZ), meaning there are already lots of licensed venues close together in the area and any new applications should be limited.

Locals were also concerned about late-night disturbances in the town centre.

Addressing police concerns about operating outside of hours, managers at the eatery on Kew Road apologised for the "genuine mistake" and said they had believed a licence, previously held by another business at the venue, was still in force.

At Tuesday's licensing committee, the takeaway's solicitor, Graham Hopkins, said the professionally-run restaurant could help the area by spreading out queues.

Speaking on behalf of the restaurant, he said the managers are late-night food experts who have other businesses in London which don't get complaints and they did the best they could with the application.

He said: "Yes, it's alright in hindsight to say they should have done more due diligence [about opening times] and that has been pointed out to them.

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"But they did do what they thought was appropriate at the time, they wrote to Merton Council and they checked on the council's website and that licence was shown.

"So I don't think that's necessarily fair to blame them for that."

He added: "There's no evidence before you today that they won't comply with the conditions."

Solicitor Michael Feeney, speaking on behalf of the Met Police, said there was no "convincing explanation" for why the restaurant should be allowed to open in the CIZ.

He said the police had "no faith" the managers would be capable of or willing to uphold the licensing objectives.

Mr Feeney said: "Granting licences in the Cumulative Impact Zone is exceptional and this premises is not exceptional.

"It's a standard takeaway with a standard set of conditions which will not solve any of the problems associated with the area.

"At best, at very best, the premises will be able to shift the problem to somewhere else in the area but it won't address the cumulative impact and the whole point of the Cumulative Impact Policy is to address cumulative impact and to address the density of licensed venues in the area so that the problem isn't just shifted from one venue to another."

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Virginia Curry, speaking on behalf of the Richmond Society, also said: "There's no means of people departing from this town so particularly in the summer months and such like, they stay and they cause problems and antisocial behaviour which is what we don't want."

Chicago Grill said it will address concerns, including bringing in last order times for people eating at the venue to 10.45pm, regular litter picking outside and using CCTV.

Richmond Council's licensing committee will decide on the application.