Some Restrictions Relaxed At Brighton Pub Following Stabbing

A Brighton pub has been told that it must keep its ID scanners despite claiming that they are “not bulletproof”.

Molly Malone’s, in West Street, wanted the conditions of its drinks licence relaxed and submitted a formal application to Brighton and Hove City Council.

The application was heard – as were objections – by a council licensing panel made up of three councillors at a hearing two weeks ago.

The panel was told that the requirement to scan the identification documents of all customers who appeared to be under 30 after 10pm was agreed at Brighton Magistrates’ Court just over a year ago.

The agreement – formalised in a “consent order” – was reached after the pub’s owner, Indigo Leisure, had appealed because the licence was revoked following a stabbing the year before.

At the council licensing panel hearing on Thursday 31 August, Indigo director Christopher Bloomfield said that none of the business’s 17 other venues in the centre of Brighton and Hove had an ID scanner.

And operations director Thelma Hayes said that the scanners were “not bulletproof” – as she learnt at a training session.

She said:

“I handed a few IDs to the training specialist. Among those were fakes. When scanned, one of the fakes came up as a pass. I explained it was a fake and the scanner had passed it.

“He shrugged his shoulders and said the machines ‘don’t detect all fakes’. I was dumbfounded when I heard this. The whole point of the scanner is to detect fake IDs.”

But the panel sided with Inspector Mark Redbourn, from Sussex Police, who said that all the leading venues in central Brighton used ID scanners, including Pryzm, Revolution and Walkabout in West Street.

In a decision letter, the council said:

“The panel considers that the opinion of a police sergeant with 20 years’ experience should carry much weight and the police are the designated crime and disorder experts within the licensing regime.

“The machines may not be infallible but this is the same for manual checks.

“Given the challenging location of the premises and the context of the summary review (which related to an underage admission), and subsequent appeal, the panel consider that it is an important safeguarding tool and that the condition should remain on the licence.”

The company had better luck with its request to remove other conditions from the licence.

A restriction requiring a final entry time of 2.30am was dropped after Indigo Leisure’s barrister, Sarah Clover, cited the loss of trade from shift workers in the hospitality industry.

She said that they were often seen running up the road to reach the business before the entry cut-off time.

The pub also wanted to ditch a condition that required the venue to host live music every night after midnight.

The panel agreed to amend the condition and it now requires the venue to stage an average of 14 live music acts a week.

The licensing panel was made up of three councillors – Ivan Lyons, Paul Nann and Alison Thomson.