Wandsworth Council decided last night whether to shut one of only two pubs in Roehampton.
We don’t know what it decided and we don’t know how it decided it because the council refused to provide public access to the meeting, in direct violation of the law.
We do know that the police recommended revoking the pub’s licence claiming instances of drug dealing and violence, and that they were supported in large part by the three local Roehampton councillors.
We also know that a police raid back in October, in which 30 police officers in tactical gear as well as a helicopter and dogs, stormed the pub with a drugs warrant, turned up nothing. We know its former landlady Sally Cox says officers explained the extreme approach by telling customers that she was a major drug dealer, when the truth is that she is simply a 64-year-old woman running a local pub.
Sally Cox has been denied the right to tell her side of the story twice to the committee.
The council has explained its decision to refuse public access to the licensing committee hearing in three ways, none of which survive scrutiny. A note on the webpage where the meeting’s attendance details should have been public reads:
“Due to the high level of community interest in this application, and in line with restrictions during the pre election period, this Licensing Sub Committee meeting will not be livestreamed or webcast. The meeting will be recorded and published after the pre election period has ended.”
A high level of community interest is precisely why the council should ensure easy public access to the committee meeting – so the public can see what is supposed to be a fair and rigorous process. That’s not just a desire, it is embedded in the law in the Local Government Act 1972, the Openness of Local Government Bodies Regulations 2014, and Regulation 14 of the Licensing Act 2003 (Hearings) Regulations 2005, all of which require that hearings of this kind take place in public.
Despite what the council implies, there is also no legal basis for preventing public access to a council meeting under so-called “purdah” pre-election restrictions. The council’s own meetings do not take place during the pre-election period but licensing committee meetings are different because they are not normal council business; they are a legal process.
When we challenged this argument directly, we were informed by the council’s monitoring officer – its most senior legal officer- that:
The decision to not webcast during the pre-election period was based on the risk given the profile of this application that comments may be made that could affect political support.
In other words, the council is concerned that if the public were to see its local councillors arguing for the closure of their local pub, they might change their vote accordingly in the elections next week.
Cllr Matthew Tiller, one of three Labour councillors for Roehampton ward, offered yet another reason on Facebook on Monday evening. He wrote that the decision “was taken to ensure the Council’s neutrality and the integrity of the quasi-judicial process”.
Meanwhile, Cllr Graeme Henderson, the council’s Cabinet Member for Health and the second of three councillors for Roehampton, posted in the same group the same day, calling coverage of the council’s decision to exclude the public “deliberate misinformation”, while identifying no specific factual errors.
Both Tiller and Henderson have signed a letter to the committee arguing for strict measures to be put in place, including the removal of the current management and giving the police a greater say over running of the pub, if it is to retain its licence.
Despite claiming in the same letter to have spoken to their constituents in reaching this conclusion, neither councillor has spoken to Sally Cox, The Angel’s landlady for the past 12 years, and neither has referenced a petition signed by 675 local residents questioning the basis for shutting the pub down and asking for it to remain open.
Both are standing for re-election next week on 7 May.
A further note on the council website reads:
A request by the applicant that the meeting be held in private-session and the press and public be excluded from the meeting, on the basis that information contained in their submissions related to an ongoing Police investigation, will be determined by the Licensing Sub-Committee at the start of the meeting.
This is a reference to the Met police which can, and often does, ask for a specific legal decision to be made when there is sensitive information or ongoing investigations that will allow the committee to go into private session.
Because the law is so clear that the public must be allowed live access to council meetings, the committee has to hold a specific vote to close even part of its meeting to the public. But what Wandsworth Council has done on this occasion is prevent any access to the meeting by holding it remotely, and then actively failing to provide a livestream or a venue when the meeting can be followed in person.
What should happen is that the information provided to the committee to make its decision is presented and discussed in public, arguments by committee members and other impacted parties – sometimes local residents – are heard, and then a vote is taken on whether to close the meeting to hear sensitive information. That has been the system for years and it has been followed repeatedly by this committee in the past year.
By refusing to provide any access to the meeting however, the council is ensuring that the public – the voting public – cannot see or hear what their councillors say about The Angel pub prior to voting for them.
The council has promised to provide a video recording of the meeting. After the election.
“The meeting will be recorded and published after the pre election period has ended.”
We have asked basic questions to the three Roehampton councillors on several occasions about this hearing, who they have spoken to, what evidence they have seen, whether they have spoken to landlady Sally Cox, whether they will mention the 675-person petition in the hearing. They have not responded to any request.
