Brewery company Free Haus has asked councillors to remove restrictions on its seafront Brighton Bier gift shop’s drinks licence as it seeks to make the business viable.
Free Haus director Stephen Whitehurst, 49, told a panel of three councillors that it had held special sales events held during summer weekends.
These had allowed customers to drink outside its gift shop, in King’s Road Arches, Brighton, and had not given rise to any problems with anti-social behaviour.
Now Mr Whitehurst wants to scrap a licence condition that limits customers to being able to drink only at special events or to buying gift sets to take away.
Customers have to book in advance to attend special events which are limited to 12 people – and can be held no more than 18 times a year.
Instead, Mr Whitehurst wants to expand the Brighton Bier gift shop’s offering to allow customers to drink on site from 11am to 8pm daily.
And he wants to offer customers specialist draft craft beers as well as ciders and premium cocktails in cans as well as Sussex wines and natural wines from elsewhere.
Other businesses near the gift shop, which is between the i360 and the Rampion Visitor Centre, in King’s Road Arches, offered written support, saying that the outlet had reduced anti-social behaviour.
Brighton and Hove City Council’s licensing official Sarah Cornell objected to the changes during a council licensing panel hearing today (Monday 17 April), saying that it would be against policy.
She told the panel – councillors Kate Knight, Jackie O’Quinn and Dee Simson – that she wanted the decision to come from councillors after they heard Mr Whitehurst’s exceptional circumstances.
Sussex Police licensing officer Claire Abdelkader had concerns about crime in the area. She said that from September 2020 to September 2021 there were 468 violent incidents within a quarter of a mile of the shop, potentially putting customers at risk.
She also said that six months after the shop was granted a licence, a police check found various breaches of conditions, although these were corrected the same day.
Mr Whitehurst said that the CCTV hard drive had been reinstalled just days before the police check, resulting in a data storage error.
And staff had not realised that they were required to keep signing the incident log even when there were no incidents.
Ms Abdelkader asked for conditions to restrict glass bottles and drinking glasses from being taken on to the beach.
She also asked about stag parties, particularly at the pre-booked events, and how Mr Whitehurst would manage such groups if the business were to be run more like a bar.
He said: “It’s not something we encourage in our pubs. It’s a small place. A lot of people would think, ‘oh, 20 people have walked up. Kerching! We’ll make loads of money.’
“Invariably with a stag party, the atmosphere can be a little bit of an issue. There is no point in making money off 15 lads off a stag do if it’s going to put off the couples, ones, twos and threes who want to come for a regular drink.
“At the brewery, we discourage stag dos. It’s not what they want. You might get a small party with five mates drinking craft beers. For large groups, it’s not the place they want to be or the things they want to drink.”
He told the licensing panel that he wanted to make his business sustainable and would be open no later than 8pm in the summer and daylight hours in the winter, without competing with the bars closer to the Palace Pier.
The panel retired to make its decision which is due to be made public within five working days.
It doesn’t sound like their circumstances afford them exceptionality.
It’s a well run venue. The majority of anti social behaviour doesn’t happen on licensed well run premises selling craft beer at £7 a pop, it’s people on the beach downing a case of lager or a bottle of vodka from the supermarket.
The licensing judges’ blanket policy of no new licenses is both stupid in a tourist destination and also blatantly hypocritical – they’ll find an excuse for a new one if you’ve got enough money (i360 et al.)