More than £20,000 seized from the owners of a Hove brothel closed by police last year has been forfeited as the proceeds of crime.
Brighton Belles in Rosa Court, Waterloo Street was ordered to shut for three months by magistrates on 12 November last year.
Adele and Peter Wakeham, of Amherst Crescent, Hove, were already under investigation for keeping a brothel and possessing a stun gun after being arrested in December 2018.
Another unnamed 54-year-old woman who had been arrested at the same time was released without charge.
In December last year, the Wakehams were given conditional cautions for keeping a brothel, and Peter Wakeham for possessing the stun gun.
And in October this year, Brighton Magistrates Court ordered that £22,572.39 – plus 55 Euros , $25 US Dollars and 20 Swiss Francs – seized by police should be forfeited.
The Proceeds of Crime Act gives police the power to apply to courts for the forfeiture of cash believed to have been generated by criminal activities.
Once forfeited, it is kept for 30 days in case an appeal is lodged, and then transferred to the Home Office.
South Coast Belles, a limited liability partnership run by Peter Wakeham and an Adele Erridge who is the same age and lives at the same address as the Adele Wakeham whose cash was forfeited, is still an active company.
However, the flat from which Brighton Belles was run has now been converted into a flat, Brighton and Hove News understands.
Police have had no further reports of the same nature from this location.
Reading this just makes me angry.
I’m sure some of our younger councillors are well intentioned but they really need to re-think their ideology and their strategies here.
It’s one thing to fantasise about a car-free world and another to run a city that relies on events, visitors and tourism. A modern city also needs a transport infrastructure.
The events bring in the tourists and they need to arrive somehow, often in cars.
If instead we want the city centre car-free then we need park and ride schemes and better public transport – and not just an expensive privatised bus service or the extortionate rail travel alternative.
And our existing bus service can’t operate efficiently if the council keep narrowing road space in favour of cycle lanes which most don’t seem to use. When the weather turns cold or wet all the cyclists mysteriously disappear. It’s a fantasy that all of us will suddenly get rid of our cars and take up cycling.
The Madeira Drive situation is at the hub of this ill-thought-out fiasco. As a cyclist myself I have found it a confusing mess of a road in recent years, and now they have new lanes about to be marked out and plastic bollards and posts everywhere. it’s like an obstacle course trying to ride or to walk or jog down there.
This is road planning by committee. The result is you see bikes on the pavement, and bikes on the road, and then you see bikes and illegal electric scooters and skateboards in the cycle lanes – but often heading the wrong way. Go check this out for yourselves.
It seems to me a difficult situation is going from bad to worse. The Terraces were already falling down due to lack of maintenance. The broad road space has been lost and now has an unnecessary cycle lane and cars weirdly parked in the middle of the road. The historic road lamps are also being replaced with ugly LEDs because the council can’t afford to maintain the originals. Despite this, the council continue to self harm by cutting off their own income with cancelled events and blocked off car parking.
Now they have a report telling them the obvious.
And the seafront road, from Kemp Town to west Hove, is now one slow and polluting line of traffic because of the duplicate cycle lane mess they have created there.
Do I want to cycle in the road when heading west? No I don’t. I want to be back on the old cycle lane which is nearer the sea, and away from the cars, and which could easily have been widened where it was and still is.
How and why did they do something so obviously stupid?
Dunno how this got posted under the wrong news article. Admin?
I agree 100% with you Billy and we are by NO means alone!
I’m sure we both know that this madness is a product of the ‘Green’ zealots, blinded as they are to reality by virtue of their poionous ideology, and their ‘partners in crime’ in the ‘unofficial’ coalition with the ‘Labour’ Party who, with the exception of around half-a-dozen worthy councillors, should have the courage to reveal themselves in their true colours as the Momentum Marxists that they are.
This current situation amounts to nothing less than a crime agaist democracy and sadly, with only a dozen-odd Tory councillors remaining, it will continue thus until May, 2023, save for a cosiderable number of successful by-election results in the meantime.
Help, however is at hand in the shape of a radical, new resident’s organisation which is currently building-up a full slate of candidates in good time for the next Local Elections.
This movement will NOT be political—it’s members and supporters will be solely devoted to the efficient and business-like running of our city, NOT using it as an experimental sounding-board for their latest pet, idealogical projects—and it follows that their views regarding national politics are entirely their own—left, right and centre can come together in the interests of the local residents.
I remain convinced that the majority of the local electorate—the silent majority, many of whom do not currently vote (not through apathy but through their contempt for poiticians in general), will rise -up and excersise their democratic rights, as happened in the 2016 Referendum.
So, Billy, let this lot do their damndest while we remain safe in the knowledge that with every day that passes, they’re merely digging themselves a DEEPER HOLE!