A SANDWICH shop owner says she will be like 'a rat in a cage' if an extension to a nearby restaurant is built two feet from her home and business.

Susan Mackin, who runs Myra's Kitchen in Brook Street, Chester, says the piece of council land at the back of her business should have been offered as public tender before being approved for sale to a restaurant in the road.

She said: 'It will be two foot away from my back door, and I'll be looking out on to a brick wall. It will block my light. Everybody says it's just a joke.'

Planning permission has been granted to Chester Tandoori at 39-45 Brook Street to build an extension to its restaurant to house toilet facilities.

Miss Mackin says she and neighbouring properties received no notification the council was considering selling the land, or any formal notices of the planning application.

Chester City Council has hit back, saying it did carry out a full consultation process.

But Miss Mackin said she only found out about the plans by chance from her architect, who was involved with her own extension.

'If that land is going for sale we should also have the right to buy it,' she said. 'I have just spent £23,000 on my extension, made myself homeless for my business and it's gone down the drain because if that monstrosity is built it could be toilets next to my catering.

'My kitchen is right at the back. What about the mess, the dust?

'I've cried for two nights because I feel like I've just thrown away £23,000.

'I don't want to look out of my window at a brick wall like a rat in a cage.'

Miss Mackin, who intends to live upstairs in the property with her son, said she spent £1,900 to have fascia brick and a slate roof on her extension.

She said: 'It's a conservation area and everything has to be kept in uniform.

'We all want to know why are we not allowed to do that but Mr Noor is.

'The only answer I am getting is because they say they agreed to sell to him 12 months ago, and that's not true. If that was true I should have been informed.' Miss Mackin's solicitor wrote to city council estates surveyor Sally Plant last month putting in an offer for the land but received a reply saying the sale had been approved with another trader.

Terry Wiggins, manager of Wiggins Estates, which leases the property between Myra's Kitchen and Chester Tandoori, said: 'The reason we are upset is that if the council is going to sell the land behind the buildings in Brook Street we were not given an opportunity to buy it, or notified that the land was going to be sold off to another business. We are going to be landlocked.'

Michael Dubell, owner of A One Designs at 55 Brook Street, and Raphael Palmerei, who owns Studio 51 next door to Miss Mackin, said they had not received planning notifications from the council on November 21.

Mr Palmerei said: 'I have got a flat up there - the noise, the pollution - I would be against that. I would have tried to buy the land myself.'

Mr Dubell said he asked to buy land outside the back of his business three times, the first time 10 years ago, but was refused each time.

Abdun Noor, owner of Chester Tandoori, said: 'Legally we have to do certain things and there were concerns from the environmental health department because they wanted us to make our kitchen a bit bigger.

'There is no other way this establishment can run without this small piece of land.

'This building is very old, you can't take any walls out. We looked at every other option, there is no other way.'

He said the toilets would not affect Miss Mackin's catering as there would be the wall between them, and added: 'It is a single-storey building so this won't block her light.'

Mr Noor said they'd changed their plans so Miss Mackin could have access to her back door, and said: 'We don't want to cause any trouble to anybody.'