Bournemouth: just one in five has door licence
by Tony Halstead
Less than 20% of doorstaff in Bournemouth have been awarded legally-required door supervisor licences, police have revealed.
More than two months after the deadline for doorstaff to obtain new licences expired, less than 100 of the 500 employed in the town's pubs and clubs are members of the scheme.
Police say they are viewing the small take-up with increasing concern and blame delays in processing applications by the Security Industry Authority as part of the problem.
"The word we get from doormen on the street is that they have put the applications in and are just waiting," said strategic police analyst Derek Johnson.
"Our estimate is that there are less than 100 who now hold the new licence out of about 500 who work the doors in premises around the town."
Johnson said teams from the police and licensing units had toured outlets in the town and the feedback from doormen was that they were still waiting to hear from the SIA.
"The situation is of greatconcern to us, especially with Christmas on the horizon and we would like to know what pub and club operators are going to do," he added.
"It seems the SIA has simply not processed the applications quickly enough."
But the SIA denied there were any delays and blamed doormen themselves for a "head in the sand" attitude. "The industry has been aware of the new requirements for the past 18 months and details have been well publicised.
"It seems that doormen have simply not acted despite all our effort to plug the scheme as widely as possible," said SIA head of marketing Mary Hennessy.
"We have targeted the owners of venues and publicised the scheme in various magazines and journals but unfortunately there seems to be a head in the sand' attitude," she added.
The original deadline for the scheme in the south-west was extended from 23 August until 13 September because of a delay in sending out applications packs.
But as far as the SIA is concerned, it went live on this date, meaning anyone running a door without the new licence is committing an offence with supervisors, managers and licensees liable for failures to comply.
