Pitfalls of Pubwatch bans

The pitfalls of banning troublemakers from pubs were laid out by barrister Steven Walsh during a breakout session at the National Pubwatch conference.

Walsh flagged up National Pubwatch's updated Good Practice Guide, which he helped to compile. It takes into account recent legal cases where individuals have secured judicial reviews of their bans.

A key issue involves the role of local authorities and police in pubwatch schemes. This came to the fore in the case of Haverhill Pubwatch in 2009, where a man forced a judicial review of his ban, claiming police and council involvement meant the scheme had a public function and should be subject to extra scrutiny.

One attendee from Shrewsbury highlighted how the council pays for a "pubwatch coordinator", who takes minutes from pubwatch meetings and drafts letters.

There's no particular problem with this, Walsh said. But he feared the policy of the coordinator suggesting individuals to be banned.

Walsh warned: "If it tends to show that the pubwatch is acting on the encouragement or instigation of public authorities, that's as close as damn it to exercising a public function."

A number of schemes receive funding from their council.

Walsh said this "isn't on its own sufficient" to be a concern. "The main issue is: is the pubwatch doing the bidding of the local authority?"

Single accreditation scheme​

He said reported plans for a single accreditation scheme for business partnerships, spearheaded by the Association of Chief Police Officers, could render pubwatches "inoperable" because membership of the schemes would give them a public function.

Elsewhere, Walsh highlighted the "really tricky" issue of avoiding slander or libel when trying to uphold pubwatch bans.

He explained that if a licensee publicly says they won't serve somebody because they have committed a particular offence — for example, dealing drugs — they need to make sure they have been convicted or they could be sued for defamation.

Facebook​

Walsh was cautiously in favour of pubwatches using pictures from facebook to identify those who had been banned.

He asked: "What is the difference between showing that photograph to pubwatch members or a photograph that had been taken perfectly properly outside Sainsbury's? I can't see a difference between the two."

His concern, though, is whether facebook itself could take issue with downloading images from the social networking site.

National Pubwatch chairman Steve Baker said: "I would have thought that if you put that sort of information in the public domain, you are fair game."

However, he stressed the need for pubwatches to register with the Data Commissioner to cover their backs.