Green light for city strip club amid objections
Despite attracting dozens of letters of objection, an application to renew the licence for one of Portsmouth’s two strip clubs has been given the go ahead by city councillors.
Member sofa licensing subcommittee agreed yesterday that Elegance, which is due to reopen next week for the first time in three years, could continueoperating from its base in Granada Road, Southsea, after praising the track record of its owner.
Object ors had warned strip clubs could lead to the abuse and exploitation of women and that its location near schools and churches made it particularly unsuitable.
Thirty people wrote to the city council opposing the annual licence renewal, however none attended yesterday’s meeting.
‘I am opposed to the exploitation and objectification of women in the sex industry and feel that this kind of business should be discouraged by the city council,’ one of the anonymous objectors said, adding that if strip clubs were to be allowed they should be outside residential areas.
No concerns were raised by Hampshire police, which a council solicitor said amounted to the force having no concerns about the business.
Elegance is run by Wellhot Ltd which also operates the city’ s others trip club: Wiggle in Land port as well as three other businesses of the same name in Southampton, Bournemouth and Weymouth. Having been open for 20 years, both Eleganceand Wiggle were excluded from the city council’ s sex establishment licence policy where it states‘ there is no place within the city of Portsmouth of which it could be said that it was situated in a locality in which it would be appropriate to licence a sex establishment’.
And licensing solicitor Jon Walls grove, who represents the company, said the fact that no objector spoke yesterday gave ‘limited weight’ to their argumentthat the business was unsuitable .‘ I’ ve been before this committee on so many renewalsand I was pleased to see that all of the futile allegations that have been made on previous applicationshave disappeared ,’ he said .‘ This club’ s been operating for 20 years and there has never been an incident where police have had to be called.
‘The allegations of intimidation by sexually-aroused men hanging around the premises are nonsensical.’
He added that although the licence allows the strip club to open seven days a week, it would not be operating daily.