Lap dance club licence hearing adjourned

nlnews@archant.co.uk
11 September 2009

LapOff! campaigners before the meeting

CAMPAIGNERS face an agonising wait to learn whether a lap dancing club will be allowed to open in Crouch End.

Hundreds of protesters packed Wood Green Civic Centre to hear a licensing application by the Music Palace in Tottenham Lane last night (Thursday) - but the hearing was adjourned after two hours because of lack of time.

Councillor David Winskill, who opened a 45-minute presentation by objectors, said after the meeting: "It is immensely disappointing that last night's meeting was adjourned as residents felt that they had clearly won many of the arguments.

"Our overall ambition is to protect children and young people in Crouch End from exposure to inappropriate and sleazy establishments like this."

Owners plan to open the club as a lap dancing venue, providing topless and fully nude dances for men from 6pm.

But protesters, some of whom were brought to tears by their strength of feeling, fear the club's proximity to the YMCA, primary and secondary schools and a church is inappropriate.

Alison Lillystone, whose Fairfield Road home backs onto the site, told the meeting: "People waiting at the bus stop outside coming back from church or school events will be encountering those men too dangerous or too smashed to be allowed in the club." She said the club would provide a "fertile hunting ground" for prostitutes and drug dealers.

Carol Jones, headteacher of the Hornsey School for Girls in nearby Inderwick Road, said: "Our girls would be at risk of male violence, sexual provocation and sexual offers." She backed her claims with a survey by pupils at the 1,400-strong school revealing 82 per cent said they would feel "desperately unsafe" if the proposal got the go ahead.

Lynne Featherstone, MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, joined the panel of protesters insisting the application was in the "wrong location" and cited the recent failed attempt of Bar 22 in Wood Green to become a strip club as justification for rejecting the application.

The meeting ran out of time before the panel of nine councillors could hear the counter-arguments by Music Palace manager Serdal Ziya, who is being represented by law firm Poppleston Allen.

A date is yet to be set but will have to fit the diaries of more than 19 interested parties.

For a full report on the meeting see next week's Hornsey Journal.