Regent Inns turns away 5,000 kids a week under Challenge 21

Regent Inns is believed to have turned away around 5,000 under-age customers a week in the first half of its current financial year.

The managed bar group, which operates 46 Walkabout venues and more than a dozen Jongleurs comedy clubs, has been enforcing the Challenge 21 policy with the result, according to brokers Panmure Gordon, that thousands of potentially under-age customers have been refused entry from its bars and clubs.

The news came as Regent announced its interim results for the 26 weeks to December 30.

The group said sales rose 10.9 per cent to £73m, although this figure included a £10.2m contribution from its recent Old Orleans' acquisition. Stripping this out saw group sales dip 4.6 per cent to £62.8m.

Operating profits before exceptionals fell by more than a fifth to £6.7m, and the group will not be paying an interim dividend for the second year running.

It pointed out that this year's interim figures did not include New Year's Eve, which affected comparables.

Trading in Regent's entertainment bars slowed after what it described as a strong World Cup period, while the hot summer weather is said to have affected business after the football tournament ended.

It also pointed to its "cautious and extremely responsible stance towards licensing [issues] during the period", and that as anticpated like-for-like sales "continued to trend below last year through to the anniversary of licensing deregulation" in November.

However Regent said that in the six weeks to January 6 2007 like-for-like sales were 3.4 per cent up on last year, with Walkabout up 3.1 per cent and Jongleurs up 4.9 per cent.

The group said the Old Orleans estate, bought from Punch Taverns in September last year, was the subject of an ongoing development programme.

This would see venues set up on Regent's own administrative systems - versus the Punch transitional services which covered the sites in the months following the acquisition and had now ceased - and a focus on food, with a new menu and new food distribution arrangements.

Old Orleans would also see "careful targeting of capital schemes" to improve trading, once transfers of the sites' short leaseholds had been completed.

Regent Inns' shares were trading this morning 1p lower than yesterday's close of 101p, the highest the group's stock has been since June last year.