City centre pub Lady Grey's is pushing on with a bid for a later 'last orders' call.
The popular boozer plans to offer a compromise to council licensing officials, after police raised concerns about the impact of its planned later letting out time on the nighttime city.
Owners Ladhar Leisure had asked Newcastle City Council to push back its final serving time from 2am to 3am, and change the closing time to 3.30am. They had offered a "trade-off", bringing forward the last hour of its other premises, Charles Grey, to 2am in exchange.
The application was denied at a licensing hearing in February, when Northumbria Police argued an extra hour of drinking would lead to greater crime and disorder around taxi ranks and takeaways once the Shakespeare Street pub emptied.
Now, Ladhar Leisure are attempting to appeal the decision, but will offer to alter their application, asking to maintain a closing time of 3am, but to continue serving until 2.40am.
At a hearing at Newcastle Magistrates' Court on Monday, Charles Holland, representing the bar chain, said the application had been "cut down" as part of the appeal, in an effort to placate council concerns.
He told the court: "Our current closing time is 3am and we stop serving at 2am, and part of the objection was an egress from the premises at 3.30am. We heard that concern and took it on board when making our appeal."
But local authority solicitor Miss Sacco claimed the alternation to the times applied for constituted an "abuse of process" because the court was being asked to consider conditions which weren't specifically put before the licensing committee. But the pub representatives argued there was legal precedent for altering the terms of an application in the appeal, and that this was being done to make the application more acceptable to councillors.
Mr Holland said if the council continued to insist there had been an abuse of process the business would be likely to seek to save money by putting in a new application to the council instead of fighting the issues in the courts.
District Judge Sarah Griffiths ordered Miss Sacco to make the council's position with regard to legal arguments clear within 21 days, and scheduled the appeal to be heard on July 17 and 18.
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