Plans for a new bar and music venue have been thrown out amid fears neighbours would be “forced to listen to rock music late into the night”.

Councillors unanimously rejected the scheme for The Dracula Parrot in Snargate Street, Dover, describing it as a good business but in the wrong location.

One of the protesters, Robin Burkhardt, after Thursday night’s meeting quipped: “In the words of Monty Python, this is a deceased parrot.”

Resident Gareth Pearce told KentOnline: “It’s a victory for the neighbours. The noise would have been horrendous, so well done the councillors.”

The company The Dracula Parrot Ltd, based in Folkestone, submitted the bid for the venue. It would have had a bar replacing a previous shopfront area, a courtyard for smokers, and a rear warehouse for playing live music.

But Mr Burkhardt, who owns The Old Curiosity Shop antiques store a few doors away and lives in the street, told the committee: “We have the A20 to the front of our homes during the day with constant noise, but we can escape this at the rear of our homes.

“If this bar is allowed to open we would lose the quiet we enjoy, with people drinking and talking outside in the courtyard until late at night.

“There are at least seven families that would not be able to open their windows or sit outside. Instead, we would be forced to listen to rock music late into the night.

“For what purpose? A very ill-thought-out project.

“Above the proposed bar is a family with one pre-school child and next door a family with at least three young schoolchildren.”

He also believed the venture would take up residents’ parking spaces in the evening.

Council planning officers recommended refusal saying its closeness to homes would “result in significant harm and a loss of amenity to the surrounding residential neighbours from associated noise, vibrations and disturbance”.

Cllr Jeff Loffman told the meeting: “I’m concerned about this development, despite this being a business I would love to see in Dover. It’s a good business but in the wrong place.”

He proposed to support the officer’s recommendation and all 10 planning councillors voted for this.

Simon Lock, one of the directors of Dracula Parrot Ltd, said the company would provide soundproofing.

He told the meeting: “Snargate Street has always been a commercial street, night and day.

“For hundreds of years, it has had a number of bars and pubs all along and those have to a great extent driven Dover’s economy.

“Its current status of having no bars is a blip in its history, which we feel is unlikely to last or to be repeated.

“We feel that Snargate Street is ripe for returning to its former glory as the vibrant hub of Dover’s nightlife. With the ongoing regeneration of the area, this could springboard Dover into a bright future approaching the second half of the 21st century.”

A total of 13 letters of objection were sent to the council from residents, also saying they feared noise and that the site wasn’t big enough for a music venue.

Another 13 supported the application, saying there was a lack of live music venues in the town and this would regenerate the local area.

The planning permission rejection comes despite the site being granted an alcohol and live music licence by the council’s licensing sub-committee in April.

After the planning committee’s decision, Mr Lock said his company would either submit a fresh bid or seek another site in Dover.

He told KentOnline: “This parrot will always rise again. We can reapply but we are also looking at other larger premises. The whole of Snargate Street is going to be back with bars and clubs, whether it’s us or not.”

Regeneration plans are in place for Bench Street just a few hundred yards away.

It is being redeveloped with a £25.4 million project including Dover Beacon, the creation of a cultural, educational and business start-up centre.

The Parrot Sketch is one of the most famous moments in the highly influential TV comedy Monty Python’s Flying Circus, from the 1960s and 1970s.

There a customer returns to a pet shop complaining he has been sold a dead parrot and uses a range of phrases to stress this such as “demised”, and “joined the choir invisible”.