LA Café and Grand Central normally trade until 4am and have a condition on their premises licence that says they are permitted to open for an extra hour when BST commences. However police officers insisted the venues should close at 3am.
The premises licences state: “Non Standard Timings: An additional hour to the standard and non standard times when British Summer Time commences.”
After a lodging a formal complaint, with the help of Kurnia Licensing Consultants, the pubs received an apology and £500 compensation each.
In a reply to Kurnia, a Lincolnshire Police spokesman said: “I have spoken to the two sergeants who gave the instruction to close the premises without having the knowledge of the license details and also the Inspector who gave the instruction.
“He was also unaware of the license exemptions for the evening/morning in question. The details were available on our systems and we made a mistake in giving this instruction.”
Taj Bola, who operates LA Café, added: “I appreciate that from time-to-time, police officers do make mistakes and am pleased to see that the complaints procedure has delivered a speedy and just result. I personally believe that officers do an excellent job on the whole and the good work they do is very often understated.”
Kurnia director Michael Kheng said: “I am satisfied with the outcome of this matter. Again it clearly shows that the police are sometimes wrong and when they are they should be challenged. Too often we see operators taking what the police say as being right when in this case this clearly was not the case.”