Council Assembly 1 - Lapdancing & Licensing

No Lapdancing 4
Originally uploaded by Fiona Colley.

The main event of the evening was a deputation calling for changes to Southwark Council's policy on licensing adult entertainment clubs.

In December Southwark Council granted a license for a lapdancing club to open in Tooley Street, close to London Bridge Station, the London Dungeons, HMS Belfast, the Unicorn Children's Theatre, Southwark Cathedral and City Hall (base of the Mayor of London and the GLA).

Since then a campaign group has formed trying to get this license revoked and also to get Southwark Council's licensing policy changed so that no more clubs can open.

The group consists of local residents, people who work in the area, church goers, the Southwark Islamic forum, local businesses and the Mayor of London.

Their shared concern is not what goes on inside the club (although many of them do take a dim view of that), but the impact the club will have on the area outside the club. Past experience both in Southwark and elsewhere indicates that this kind of club can bring with it increases in anti-social behaviour, solicitation and sexual assults. More info here.

Westminster Council has a lot of experience with this and they recently adopted a tough licensing policy which bans new clubs from opening in close proximity to residential areas, schools, places of worship and community facilities (basically everywhere in the borough).

In contrast Southwark Council has no specific restrictions on adult entertainment.

I've been involved with the campaign for some time now as I work up at London Bridge. Initially the focus was on making legal challenges to try to stop the club opening. Those have failed and it is now accepted that the club will open.

So attention has turned to changing Southwark's policy which is where I've really been able to help.

I arranged for representatives from the group to come down to the Town Hall to make their concerns known to councillors. As well as protesting on the steps of the Town Hall, they also made a presentation at the meeting, following which I moved a motion calling for a review of the licensing policy.

Sadly the LibDems and Tories prefer to play politics with this issue. They refuse to take responsibility for our weak policy and keep trying to claim that national legislation prevents them from taking a strong stance which just doesn't stack up when you look at the policy of Westminster Council. So they used their majority to amend my motion and include lots of government bashing.

They did leave in our calls for a full review of local policy and proper consultation, so even though we didn't agree with everything they'd inserted about national legislation, we voted for the final version of the motion because we want the review too much to worry about their petty party politicing.