At a marathon session last night, Lambeth Council’s Licensing Sub Committee voted to suspend the licence of Veranda Bar on Acre Lane for eight weeks and impose stringent new conditions. This followed a ‘serious incident’ in October and representations by the police and Brixton Hill’s councillors.

The review of Veranda’s licence came about because of a shooting incident at the venue on 19 October. The police expressed serious concerns about how Veranda’s management had failed to prevent the gun coming onto the premises and how they had reacted to the incident subsequently. The police representations can be read here.

Around the same time, Brixton Hill’s councillors had been meeting with residents of Porden Road about major issues concerning anti-social behaviour, public nuisance and concern for public safety, with Veranda’s late-night clientele bearing much of the responsibility and with an inadequate response from the venue. As a consequence Councillor Martin Tiedemann made a representation to the Sub-committee detailing some of these issues and with recommendations for how these could be dealt with on top of the police recommendations in direct response to the shooting. Continue reading →