Last week, two of Roehampton’s three councillors testified in front of a panel deciding the future of The Angel pub. The police want its licence revoked. Nearly 700 residents have signed a petition calling for it to stay open – the pub is one of only two serving 18,000 people in Roehampton. The councillors sided with the police.
The meeting was held entirely behind closed doors. We are not supposed to know what was said; the council saw to that.
Cllr Tiller said publicly the day before that the decision to hold a closed meeting was taken “to ensure the council’s neutrality and the integrity of the quasi-judicial process.” The council’s Monitoring Officer had told Putney.news in writing that it was because of “the risk given the profile of this application that comments may be made that could affect political support.”
Those are two different explanations.
Sally Cox, who ran The Angel for nearly twelve years, asked to attend both hearings and was refused on both occasions.
Despite the council’s best efforts, Putney.news has found out what happened at the hearing. Here is what the two councillors who represent Roehampton said, in the room their constituents were not allowed into.
Cllr Matthew Tiller
Cllr Tiller went into the hearing and took the side of the police.
He told the committee he was speaking on behalf of residents who had had problems with the pub, focusing on the small group living behind The Angel on Angel Mews. He said the pub had been assessed as high risk and that it was “too early to say” whether the pub was “on a positive journey.”
He did not mention the 681 local residents who had signed the petition in support of the pub. He did not mention any comments from locals who have repeatedly questioned the police’s version of events, even though Putney.news had raised both with him in several emails prior to the meeting.
Punch Partnerships, which owns the pub, had already replaced Sally Cox with a new manager, David Slaughter, to address the committee’s concerns. Tiller argued that Slaughter should also be removed, questioning his suitability on the basis that he had worked at The Angel nearly 20 years ago. Punch’s lawyer took issue with that and told the committee that Slaughter had turned around several struggling pubs. The committee accepted that. The new manager kept his job.
Tiller also cited a broken fence and window as evidence the pub was not on the right track. Both had already been fixed.
Tiller’s conclusion: if the committee was not going to revoke the licence, the new management team should have “no association with previous employees.” The previous landlady, Cox, told us that she was put under pressure to leave and was told the council would close the pub unless there was a change in management. We now know where some of that pressure came from.
Cllr Graeme Henderson
Cllr Henderson also sided with the police; his first comment to the hearing was to thank the Metropolitan Police for submitting the application to close the pub.
Henderson did mention the petition. When he raised it, however, he immediately challenged its legitimacy, noting that “no addresses could be verified.”
It is an online petition.
Henderson, who lives in Wandsworth Town, told the committee he was speaking on behalf of “anonymous constituents who were fearful of reprisals.”
The day before the hearing, Henderson posted on Facebook describing coverage of the closed hearing as “deliberate misinformation.” He did not, and has not, identified any errors in that reporting.
Former landlady Sally Cox strongly disputes the police’s version of events; and so does the brewery that owns the pub. Neither Tiller nor Henderson have spoken to her.
What residents could not hear
Because the public and press was excluded, residents could not hear Punch’s lawyer respond to the claims being made.
The police sent over 30 officers in full protective equipment into the pub in a rush raid in October last year, complete with dogs and a helicopter keeping watch from above. They clearly expected to pull off a major drugs bust.
Instead they found nothing but cannabis stalks, the woody residue of consumed cannabis, recovered from a private bedroom upstairs in a very small quantity. The police pointed to “57 snap bags” – small plastic bags that can be bought online in quantities of 100 for £2.99 – as evidence of possible drug sales.
Punch’s lawyer pointed out not only that the bags were unused and free of any evidence of drugs, but that the raid took place during a baby shower: yet another detail in what has become an increasingly absurd case.
The police justified closing the hearing to the public on the grounds of future “potential” prosecutions. Putney.news has repeatedly asked the Met for additional details on the raid; we have yet to receive a response. The council has yet to adequately explain why it closed the entire meeting rather than just the part in which the Met offered confidential information.
What the committee decided
The Licensing Sub-Committee heard the full police case, saw the CCTV evidence, and considered the representations from Cllrs Tiller and Henderson before making a decision. It took half an hour to reach its decision.
It decided there were no grounds to justify revoking the Angel’s licence. It did not accept Tiller’s argument that the new manager was unsuitable. It made no mention of the hundreds of residents that signed a petition. It didn’t hear from the pub’s landlady despite her twice requesting to give evidence.
It did find that Punch had failed to properly manage its tenant, and ordered a two-month suspension of the premises licence with eleven new conditions, including monthly residents’ meetings and tighter noise controls. If the pub accepts the ruling – it can appeal – it will use the two-month suspension to revamp the pub, promising to spend £300,000 on much-needed renovations.
The committee received ten formal representations in support of the police’s application and none in defence of the pub. The petition Henderson questioned, which we first covered in February, stood at 681 signatures as of Sunday.
The council’s stated reason for not making the hearing public was that “comments may be made that could affect political support.” In other words, people are unlikely to vote for the guy who shut down their local pub.
Both Cllr Tiller and Cllr Henderson are standing for re-election this week.
I assume a property developer has been circling …?