Turning its own defeat into victory

This seems to be a week for local authority bashing on these pages. Step up, Westminster City Council, which managed last week to turn defeat into victory, simply by saying so!

The long-running saga of Movida, the upmarket West End nightclub, finally ended with the High Court rejecting the council's contention that the conditions placed upon the 7am licence for the club by the district judge were unclear or confusing. The court awarded the club another tranche of costs, which will have to be borne by the hapless taxpayers of the borough, on top of all the money already expended on this issue.

Westminster managed to spin the original hearing out for 11 days and still was not satisfied. It was roundly criticised by the judge at the original hearing for the tactics it had employed, but that did not deter it from pursuing the matter even further.

What irked me at the time was the fact that Westminster's appeal to the High Court was itself well out of time, yet the senior judge who heard its application allowed it to go through because it was such a "prestigious" local authority. Some of us might have thought of a different adjective, but it seemed somewhat perverse to allow Westminster to flout the law which would have been strictly applied to any licensed trade applicant — indeed to any other applicant in similar circumstances.

Movida, unfortunately, may be the exception that proves the rule. Westminster is more or less inflexible on its policy issues — it is fair to say that it operates a different Licensing Act from the rest of the country. Its defence is that the entertainment areas of the capital are unique and special measures have to be taken both to protect residents and ensure compliance in such a situation. But it takes a very rigid view — so much so, that the idea of each case being judged on its merits does not really occur. Each case is judged on Westminster's policy, and that's an end to it. You have to be extremely fortunate to find a chink in this licensing fortress.

Movida had the money and the persistence to take the council on, but few of the ordinary licensees in the capital could do so. As a result, some of them are suffering under restrictive terms on their licences which they can do nothing about in these difficult times. The stories of frustration and intransigence keep on coming. And yet Westminster's PR machinery continues to claim that it is right. Nelson's eye it is.