SBC: North Bay Nightclub Gets License

A Premises License Application by Alpamare UK Ltd has been granted by the Licensing Sub-Committee of Scarborough Borough Council (SBC), despite 316 objections against opening until 2am.

There will be a night club operating at the proposed North Bay Water Park, but it will only operate for six nights of the year. The night club, or Alpamare Pool Party events as the applicant termed them, cannot be held within thirteen days of each other.

The 8am-2am indoor and outdoor licensing application for the Water Park was scaled back during the course of the hearing, in the face of 316 objections. Solicitor Richard Taylor of Gosschalks, acting for Alpamare, opted not to apply for any outdoor licensable activities and scaled back the times for other licensable activities to 10am-10pm.

Two of the three councillors who sat on the Licensing Sub-Committee had previously attended the full council meeting of 9th September 2013, where they voted to loan Benchmark Leisure Ltd £9million of public money to build the North Bay Water Park.

There are questions over the legality of the decision as the political balance of the Licensing Committee and the Licensing Sub-Committees differ greatly than that of the Council. The figures show that the Independent group have had far too many seats whilst the Labour group have not had enough seats for quite some time.

A study of recent Licensing Sub-Committee meetings reveals that a single member of the Labour group has sat on the Sub-Committee just twice since March. During the same period Conservatives have sat 43 times and the Independents 24 times, despite the Labour group having the same number of seats on the council as the Independents until two weeks ago.

There is legislation that dictates there should be political balance on the council’s committees, which is mirrored in the council’s Constitution. The council’s legal officers should intervene to rebalance the committees where required. The officers have been advised of the political balance issues, but there has been no comment from the council thus far.