Whiteladies Road BSB bar fined for licence breaches

mso-bidi-font-size:9.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";

color:#2A2A2A">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!