A luxury hotel and wedding venue near Watford has been given permission to run a garden marquee and outdoor cinema, despite opposition from nearby residents.

The owner of Hunton Park, near Leavesden, said that the hotel “needs” the marquee to attract wedding bookings, and described the cinema as “a way to bring the hotel back to the community”.

But residents who live nearby raised concerns that previous complaints about noise from the hotel may be exacerbated by changes to its operating licence.

Councillors on Three Rivers District Council’s licensing sub-committee heard from an objector who said: “I can still hear the music inside my house with the windows closed.

“It still keeps my daughter awake at night. Your ‘limiting system’ is not making the music inaudible at your boundary; it’s not even making it inaudible in my house.

“On occasion, in the past, we’ve had to go away for the weekend to avoid it because it’s quite upsetting if you have a small child.”

He said the noise was sometimes audible “even over the TV”, and called for a condition stating that noise must not be audible beyond the hotel’s boundary to be included in the licence.

Another resident, chair of the local residents’ association, said he was “prepared to accept the hotel is better run now than it was”, but felt there was not enough detail on how the hotel would “manage noise”.

Environmental health said they had received three complaints about noise from the hotel this year, including two in September.

But the hotel owner said they had not been made aware of the recent complaints, and that this meant they were “stuck between a rock and a hard place”.

He said he had bought the hotel in 2022 when it was a state of disrepair and there was a “broken team”.

He continued: “When we inherited the property, we weren’t aware of a lot of the issues.

“We’ve put plans in place, we’ve put procedures in place, we’ve got the right team in place now to manage that. We feel that this year has been a vast improvement on previous years.”

He said he was “not happy at all” when he purchased the property and found he had pre-existing bookings, which went ahead, that allowed customers to use their own sound equipment.

The owner said he had “put an immediate stop to this” for future bookings, so the hotel had “far greater control” over potential noise problems. No written warnings have been issued to the hotel about noise.

The owner also said £50,000 had been spent upgrading the hotel’s facilities between January and March this year, and he had “extensive plans” for further upgrades if the permission was granted.

An updated licence for the hotel was agreed after the meeting, which states the noise, when measured close to nearby homes, must not be any louder than five decibels higher than normal background noise.

The business must also agree a noise management plan with environmental health before the garden marquee can be used for entertainment, and noise monitoring patrols must take place every hour in the evenings when events are taking place in the marquee.

Music and films at Hunton Park can be played until 1am on Fridays and Saturdays, until midnight Monday to Thursday, and until 11pm on Sundays.

Events in the garden marquee must finish by midnight on Fridays and Saturdays, and by 11pm on other days.