Weymouth strip club has licence renewed
Wiggle on New Street has gone through their annual assessment
Weymouth lap-dance club, Wiggle, has had its sexual entertainment licence renewed – despite one objection.
A licensing hearing in Dorchester has been told that the club, in New Street might attract ‘unsuitable people’ to the town, at a time when it was trying to make improvement at the Peninsula and on the site of the Wessex Bowl.
The complainant also alleged the company which runs the business, and others at Portsmouth and Southampton, was unsuitable.
But despite her claims neither Dorset Police nor any Dorset Council department had objected to the licence renewal.
The woman who raised an objection told councillors that although she had been invited by the business, Wellhot Ltd, to visit the club and meet the performers she had decided not to do so.
At a previous hearing she had said that women coming across the club, unexpectedly, might feel fearful to be in the same area as a strip club.
Wellhot business general manager Taran Sigh Ojla said the company was run in compliance with all the rules and was proud of the care it took of its staff, including walking dancers to their cars to ensure they were safe after work.
He said since the company had taken over the Weymouth business, in 2018, after seven years under a different owner, there had never been any complaints – and no objections to the licence renewal previous to last year and this year.
Mr Ojla said all the objections from the same person had been raised, and rejected, last year.
In a summary of the licensing panel findings the three councillors decided that the applicant was not unsuitable and that the venue was also a suitable place:
“The premises are not on the Esplanade or seafront or on a main through route but rather on a back street. The Sub-Committee did not consider that the securing of funding for the regeneration of areas of Weymouth meant that the licence could not be renewed.
“The Sub-Committee accepted that the applicant had held the licence for some years without any complaints, and they also operated several other similar venues in other locations where the licences had been renewed.. the Sub-Committee did not think that any of the possible grounds for refusing the renewal application applied in this case and therefore determined that the licence should be renewed with the conditions as applied to the previous licence.”
Condition of the renewed licence include no admission to under 18s; a full record and identity checks for all the performers; performers not to be alone with a customer, expect in designated booths; and for them ‘not act in a lewd manner, or use suggestive or sexually graphic language at any time’; with customers having to remain dressed at all times.
The club also has to keep CCTV recording of areas where dancing takes place with cameras also covering the club entrance.