Shisha lounge's opening hours reduced due to 'large scale fight's over last 18 months
The Hayatt Lounge in Greenwich said the decision would "kill the business".
A shisha lounge in East London has had it' opening hours reduced after a violent 18 months saw stabbings, armed robberies and large-scale fights in its vicinity.
Greenwich Council’s Licensing Review Sub-Committee conducted a premises licence review for Hayatt Lounge, a shisha lounge and late-night venue in Charlton.
Police applied to reduce Hayatt’s opening hours due to the criminal incidents.
Hayatt Lounge responded saying it would “kill the business”. The venue argued that police needed to step up their response to the incidents in order to protect its staff and customers.
Hayatt’s closing time has been brought forward by an hour each day, now closing at 3am on Monday to Wednesday and 4am on Thursday to Sunday.
Staff member “hit heavily over the head with a canister of nitrous oxide gas”
David Graham, the legal representative of the Metropolitan Police, said at the licence review that there had been 13 instances of serious crime and disorder that had taken place in the vicinity of Hayatt since February 2024.
These included two men being stabbed after trying to break up a fight, a Hayatt customer being robbed of his jewellery at gun point before being pistol whipped, and another man being robbed by four masked men, one of whom had a machete, right outside the venue.
There was also brawl outside Hayatt that involved up to 50 people in April.
Mr Graham set out the police’s case. He said, quoting a police officer: “What has prompted this review is not a lack of cooperation or failures on the part of Hayatt Lounge, but rather the sheer volume of crime that can be attributed to the premises because of the availability of licensable activities.”
Mr Graham added: “We believe that these premises can be run in a way that does not undermine the licensing objective, but the fundamental issue here is the late-night operating model which is creating conflict with security staff and it is attracting violent and armed people into this immediate area and resulting in commission of serious offences.”
Cllr Ann-Marie Cousins asked police why more officers and resources had not been committed to try and curtail the crime that occurred near Hayatt. In response, Mr Graham asked whether it was right that this venue should be placing an “extra burden” on the police who would have to come up with a “bespoke plan where they have more officers assigned in the early hours of the morning to this particular site because it is causing crime”, a notion he called “perverse”.
Hayatt’s legal representative Gary Grant said: “The reasonable remedy for a migraine is not always a beheading, but that is the police’s submission to you today.”
Mr Grant said the majority of the criminal incidents in question occurred either when door staff complied with licensing conditions and “banned troublemakers from entering” or when “villains from outside travel in to prey on our customers”.
In response to police not wanting to commit extra resources to monitor the venue, Mr Grant said: “You do not close late-night premises because the police do not have the resources, or more likely, they do have the resources but they are not prepared to prioritise this particular area during these hours. That is a police resource problem, and if we ran our licensing system according to police resources, just about every licensed venue would have to close its doors.”
Mr Grant said Hayatt was in discussions with police following an incident in June on how the premises and officers could work in collaboration to reduce crime. Certain conditions were drawn up the week before the July 27 incident, but these discussions broke down after the assault occurred, which Mr Grant said had only taken place because a security guard was doing his job and had tried to rightfully stop someone undesirable from getting in.
Hayatt general manager Gemma Creamer said the venue had sent conditions to the police, but PC Alsaukas had “ignored” them. She also did not understand how the police’s additional conditions of stopping vertical drinking and live performances would prevent crime, saying that would “ruin the very vibe which customers come to Hayatt Lounge for”.
Mr Grant also wanted the committee to consider “the future of this extremely popular venue, one whose representors within your papers have spoken extremely highly, given its value to the community, and in particular the West African and Caribbean community who it primarily serves” and the 50 Hayatt employees who were waiting on the committee’s decision “to know if they have a job tomorrow”.
He added: “We ask that the 104,000 people who attend this venue peacefully each year are not having their entertainment areas ruined because a tiny minority of criminals are focusing on our customers and our security guards.”