Late-night venues' CCTV headache

Late-night bars and clubs in the city of Aberdeen could be forced to comply with more strict and costly CCTV guidelines.

Grampian Police has drafted a list of new regulations including suggestions such as CCTV cameras "must have lip-synched audio capture capability".

It also suggested new lighting could be installed, and operators should keep a maintenance log of the cameras.

The proposals would apply to venues with capacity for at least 250 people, which are open between 1am and 5am, and provide live or recorded music with a decibel level exceeding 85dB.

Plans also apply to those venues that have facilities for dancing, or provide some form of adult entertainment. A consultation by Aberdeen City Council ran from 8 June to 6 July.

The Scottish Beer & Pub Association's (SBPA's) submission said the consultation was not clear on why changes had to be made.

The organisation added that the proposals were "unnecessary and will produce minimal additional benefit in meeting the licensing objectives of the 2005 Act. Our members believe this represents 'gold-plating' of the statutory requirement, which is already being met by operators".

SBPA chief executive Patrick Browne said: "We believe that much of the detail is unnecessary, particularly for "late-opening" licensed pubs, and could impose potentially significant costs on operators for minimal additional benefit."

He has called on the licensing board to conduct further discussions with operators and Grampian Police to arrive at a "less prescriptive specification".

A Grampian Police spokesman said: "Aberdeen City Licensing Board is consulting

on some proposed changes to the standards of CCTV required by late-opening premises as part of the Licensing Conditions (Scotland) Regulations 2007.

"As that consultation is not yet completed, it would be inappropriate for us to pre-empt the results by commenting publicly."