Plans to extend opening hours at a village pub have been blasted as ‘cloud cuckoo land’ by worried neighbours.

New management at the White Oak pub on The Pound in Cookham wants to be allowed to sell alcohol as early as 9am and late as midnight. They also want to be able to play live and recorded music on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, and allow the sale of alcohol outdoors.

But neighbours said the extended hours will cause noise pollution for those living nearby, at a hearing before councillors at the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. Nicholas Jones, who lives on Terry’s Lane in Cookham said neighbours will be ‘blighted’ with noise.

He said: “The noise nuisance from the pub is not just during the night, it’s during the day as well.”

Mr Jones added that promises to keep the doors and windows closed when music is on were ‘absolute cloud cuckoo land – it will never happen’.

He said: “Unless someone stands there from the police monitoring it all the time they will just ignore it and therefore we will get blighted with more and more noise.”

Jonathan Ford who lives opposite the pub said the increases in opening hours would ‘by their very nature increase noise disturbance’.

And Fiona Beaumont from the Cookham Association said later licensing hours might encourage ‘merry and loud customers’ to move on to the White Oak after the nearby Swan Uppers pub closes.

But pub owners from the Brucan Pubs company say the later hours won’t fundamentally change the White Oak as a food-led gastropub.

Speaking on their behalf, Piers Warne from TLT solicitors said the changes would allow for later dining, making the pub more viable to run.

He said: “This is about trying to augment what we do. This isn’t a Wetherspoon-type operation. It isn’t people coming in for a quick fry-up and a pint of Amstel. It’s very much a different proposition to that.”

Mr Warne said the main reason for wanting to extend the license for sale of alcohol outdoors was to allow waiting staff to take orders and payments from handheld devices.

He said there would not be a permanent bar in the beer garden, but that there might be the ‘odd occasion’ where alcohol is sold from ‘a couple of trestle tables’ at functions.

And he said managers would ensure that noise is kept down in the garden. He said: “Guests in a garden screaming, shouting, singing, causing a disturbance – it’s not only bad for them, it’s bad for the other customers to allow that to happen.

“It’s very much in the interests of management to ensure that everyone behaves in a respectful way.”

The hearing was held by the council’s licensing sub-committee on Monday September 2. Councillors have until Monday September 9 to announce their decision.