Name

Subject

Reason

Interest

Councillor Browne

Review of Premises Licence – Clipper Inn, 65 Union Street, Plymouth (minute 92 refers)

Knows the respondent

Personal

CouncillorMrs Nicholson

Review of Premises Licence – Clipper Inn, 65 Union Street, Plymouth (minute 92 refers)

Knows the respondent

Personal

(a)

received advice from the Monitoring Officer that whilst members needed to be aware of political sensitivities with regard to  decision making  as the Council was in its pre-election period, there were no public interest reasons for the review not to go ahead;

(b)

considered the report from the Director for Place;

(c)

heard Devon and Cornwall Police’s representation:

(i)

the following gave live evidence for the police: PC Austin, Sgt Loveridge, Mr McIndoe, PC Wilkins and Mr Prout. They gave details about the problems experienced with the premises in relation to drunkenness, disorder, violence and lack of cooperation from the premises licence holder (PLH) and designated premises supervisor (DPS) generally and in particular with regard to requests for CCTV;

(ii)

the Police also read out witness statements from Officers who were not present before the committee which further detailed the problems the Police were experiencing with the premises;

(iii)

the Police played 25 minutes worth of CCTV which detailed incidents which had occurred on the 8 December 2011, 1 January 2012, 9 January 2012, 3 February 2012, 4 February 2012, 9 February 2012, 23 February 2012, 25 February 2012, 26 March 2012 and 8 April 2012;

(iv)

theCCTV showed incidents of violence, disorder and drunkenness. It also showed how the behaviour of the patrons of the Clipper impacted on the general public going about their normal business in the morning. In particular it showed patrons staggering in the road causing vehicles to swerve to avoid them and also groups of drunken people staggering towards the residential area of the Octagon;

(v)

licensed premises report forms (L10’s) which were licensed premises intelligence forms were produced by the Police as a record of the problems at the premises. These were referred to in the timeline of incidents at the premises referred to by the Police;

the police told the committee of the difficulties they had had in contacting the DPS on the numbers he had provided either by text, telephone or correspondence. The police had been contacting the DPS on the mobile phone number which had been provided but were still not getting any response or even acknowledgement from  him;

(vi)

there had also not been any response from the PLH in response to correspondence sent to the registered address of the company. The police therefore considered that there was a lack of cooperation from the PLH and DPS which was hampering the promotion of the crime and disorder licensing objective;

(vii)

in relation to the contact problems these were outlined in the statement of Mr Fred Prout dated the 10 April 2012;

(viii)

the problems in contacting the DPS had meant that it had been extremely difficult in obtaining CCTV from the premises to assist in the investigation of crime and disorder and had on more than one occasion resulted in criminal investigations either being dropped or with the police not having all the evidence that  ...  view the full minutes text for item 92.