Islington Tribune - News: Tea dances at 'binge' boozer

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Islington Tribune - by PETER GRUNER
Published: 4 May 2007

Tea dances at ‘binge’ boozer

THE owner of a noisy Islington pub offered tea dances for the elderly, events for “well behaved” over-29s and a retired Met police detective to keep order.
It was all part of a desperate package of measures by Howard Mendoza, owner of the troublesome Tufnells pub in Tufnell Park Road, to keep his late-night licence when it came up for scrutiny at an Islington licensing committee meeting on Wednesday.
An angry delegation of neighbours from the Tufnell Park Residents Association told the committee how their lives had been made miserable by the “binge Britain” antics of customers, with unrelenting weekend noise and violent assaults outside their homes.
The residents wanted the pub – which currently stays open to 3am at the weekend – to close at 11pm.
However, the committee reduced times for the sale of alcohol by just one hour – until midnight during the week and 1am Friday and Saturday, with a further hour for drinking-up time.
Residents blamed the pub for the disturbances, but also on occasion the police for their inaction.
One resident described how he discovered a man and a woman lying together on top of his car outside his home in the early hours, watched by several others, but when he rang Holloway police he could get no reply.
He was informed later that failure to reply might have been due to a new state of the art police call centre, which has been known to switch Holloway callers through to wrong numbers.
The residents group had lodged a review of Mr Mendoza’s licence under the same Licensing Act of 2003 that allows for 24-hour drinking.
Licences can ultimately be revoked if complaints are not resolved.
Residents complained that they were having to wear earplugs at night because of noise at the weekend.
Incidents included a young man being kicked unconscious outside the club at 2.15am and two men were “glassed” inside the club.
Mr Mendoza said he had done everything in his power to keep the noise down, and promised to transform the venue into a community pub offering live jazz and summer barbecues.
He added: “I’ve had a sound-limiter fixed, put in sound-proofing and taken on a new partner – a retired Met police detective – to keep order.
“I want this to be a family pub. I’d like to see tea dances – the old rowdy image is going to change.”
One resident said: “We’re very disappointed. We put in a lot of hard work bringing this review.”

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