New owners of Sleaford restaurant want to rebuild trust with community

Samantha Pavlou, from Tiamo’s in Sleaford Market Place, said she was ‘very happy’ with councillors’ decisions to drop a review into her premises licence after she was able to prove she had no connection with a former owner who was jailed earlier this year for tax evasion.

However, she said: “The word is people don’t want to put their hard earned money into the business because of the past history, our message is that we’re new people, it’s very different.

“We’re not connected in any way and they can trust that and hopefully people will be able to see that over time.

“We’re already within the community with our other businesses so hopefully the trust is there - we just need to put that into the restaurant.”

Samantha had not known about the licence review when she purchased the property, but praised North Kesteven District Council for helping her ‘every step of the way’.

She and her husband already run Fillets in Sleaford and Chish and Fips in Lincoln, but this will be their first Italian restaurant.

“We want to put something into Sleaford that might not necessarily be there at the moment,” said Samantha.

“We’re shopping local for the produce for the restaurant, local butchers, salad man, vegetable man. We just wanted to put something back into the business.”

Sgt Kim Enderby, licensing officer at Lincolnshire Police, called the decision to drop the review “good news”.

“At licensing meetings we often find we’re closing businesses down, but our job is as much to support local businesses and facilitate licensed premises to be within the community, support it and serve it.”

Daniel Jaines , Local Democracy Reporting Service