Agreed that Councillor Rennie is appointed as Chair and Councillor Gordon is appointed as Vice Chair for this meeting.

There were no declarations of Chair’s Urgent Business.

There were no items of Chair’s Urgent Business.

The Director for Place will submit a report on the review of premises licence.

The committee:

-       Considered the report from the Director for Place

-       Considered the police evidence as follows from written and verbal submissions that:

·         On the 28 September 2012 Devon and Cornwall Constabulary applied for a review under section 53A Licensing Act 2003 in respect of 99-101 Union Street Plymouth (the premises) as the premises was associated with serious crime and disorder.

·         On the 1 October 2012 at the interim steps hearing the Licensing Authority agreed to suspend the licence pending the final review hearing in order to promote the crime prevention licensing objective

·         The premises licence was held by Plymouth Nightlife Limited between 31 October 2011 until the 13 July 2012 when it was transferred to Devon Pub Services Limited. The director of both companies was Gary Miller.

·         There has been serious violence with injury both at the premises and within the immediate vicinity of the premises. The level and frequency has escalated and the police investigations indicate that the management and door staff are failing on a regular basis to show the expected duty of care to those affected:

o   The statement of Mr Prout detailed the management failings with respect to their duty of care and detailed visits he had made to the premises to engage with the management.

o   L10’s produced also demonstrated incidents where the door staff had been ineffective, uncooperative and sometimes heavy handed.

·         The management and door staff regularly fail to effectively engage with the police in the promotion of the licensing objectives as they fail to contact the Police to report incidents of serious assaults, violence and disorder.

·         A timeline shows:

o    23 incidents of violent crime from October 2011 to the end of September 2012.  This showed four crimes of wounding with intent to cause GBH, four crimes of wounding without intent to cause GBH, 13 assaults occasioning actual bodily harm and 2 common assaults.

o   Disorder and reports from Police of drunkenness, management and door staff failings and violence

·         PC McClean’s statement detailed an audit that had been carried out in July 2012 following a serious assault in the premises and had spoken to manager Dan Robinson about the door staff’s lack of awareness. Following this it was noted that a banning book and incident book had been introduced and that door staff were being more robust. However further serious incidents then occurred. PC McClean told the committee that the premises had been helpful to her and that she considered that Mr Robinson was the manager. She said that she had told the premises of her concerns about the door supervisors and had said that there were some good ones but that others were really bad. She added that the fact that the door supervisors were still in place indicated that the premises were not taking her complaints about the door supervision seriously.

·         CCTV evidence was shown of recent serious assaults occurring inside and immediately outside the premises and a statement from the male assaulted on the 22 September  ...  view the full minutes text for item 53.

Whilst parts of the documentation presented to Committee were confidential, it was not necessary for the Committee to move to Part II during their discussions on this application.