Our Day In Court

Thankyou all who turned up to yesterday's District Licensing Authority court hearing. This was supposed to be a 10 till noon affair but, because of the large number of objections, it became an all day marathon, which forced postponement of the afternoon hearing that was scheduled to follow ours. Even with the extra afternoon session, in the interests of time those of us that were expecting to read our submissions publicly were asked to let the court take them as read, and most of us felt happy to do this.

It was also wonderful to see community support from organisations such as the Police and the Shirley-Papanui Community Board, adding their considerable weight to our objections.

Despite the rescheduling required, I am sure that Judge Hole was gratified to see so many of us turn up. (So few of us turned up last time he felt obliged to comment on our poor turnout at the time of the hearing.) A credit to Margaret and her many assistants!

The applicants, Olivia Boote, Gary (Olivia's father), John (Olivia's uncle) and their new bar manager (Robert Thompson-Brown) seemed somewhat disorganised and not convincingly able to deflect criticism that Club 22's operation was causing increased crime in the area. However, I'm obviously biased, so fingers crossed for a decision to decline the application.

I'll publish the outcome here when it appears in a few weeks time.