Whiteladies Road BSB bar fined for licence breaches

The BSB bar on Whiteladies Road has been fined for breaching licensing law.

Let’s face it, the Whiteladies Road drag on a weekend has always been a bit of a rat run with short men squaring up to each other, chubby mini-skirt clad girls calling each other *****es and skinny wasters throwing up in the street.

You need only look at the bars along the road to understand why this is – BSB, The Ranch, Dragon Kiss, Sasparilla, Alter Ego...the list goes on. There’s no shortage of drinking holes selling cheap (or not) alcopops, cider and Stella to the weekend funseekers.

This is exactly why its so important to abide by licensing law. It’s bad enough when people do, but when they don’t – CARNAGE!

The council and the police have their work cut out manning Whiteladies Rd but it’s a good job they do, for BSB (run by the Swindon-based Charlton Leisure) were found guilty of multiple breaches of their licence conditions and fined £11,000 with £3,800 costs.

During visits licensing officers found the following contraventions:

• An emergency door was bolted shut.
• Seized drugs and weapons were not stored properly.
• Breaches of conditions that limited noise disturbance to local residents including leaving large windows open.
• Poor management of door staff

Many of the faults were common across all three branches of the bars and each one had significant individual failings in management.

"We welcome this result as it echoes the seriousness with which the council and police regard safety at Licensed premises", said Cllr Gary Hopkins, Cabinet Member for Targeted Improvement for Bristol City Council. ""This is one of a number of recent successful prosecutions by the new joint enforcement team of licensing staff and police”.

The police and Council licensing Joint Enforcement Team (JET) was set up in March this year, as a development of the previous close working relationship between the two agencies.

The team is based at New Bridewell Police Station and is focussed on tackling mismanaged licensed premises across the city of Bristol

Licensing Manager, Ian Wilkinson who supervises the team said, "The number of breaches of licence conditions, spread across three large venues, were a matter of grave concern to us and clearly impinged on the safety of customers. However we are glad to say that matters have improved recently and we are determined that improvement must be maintained. We want to work with licensees and with our partner agencies to achieve and sustain the highest standards".

Supt Ian Wylie said “Putting a specialist team together is proving a highly successful way to tackle those licensed premises that cause danger to the public in their operations. This is a key strand in our joint approach to make Bristol a safer city”.

What do you think? Could more be done to manage the changing face of Whiteladies Road? From a bustling shopping haven during the day to Booze Britain in the evening? Or perhaps you welcome this weekend drinking culture on the strip as it clearly boosts the local economy!