UK Sex Sells News

A Westbury night spot will be allowed to stage more strip shows after winning a sexual entertainment licence.

A director of Comus Leisure, which owns Venom, said it needed to run more events because it had been hit hard by the pandemic and months of lockdown. He told Wiltshire Council's licensing panel:

We just need to do these events more frequently because my venue was closed for 18 months and costs £20,000 per month to run. We've got to do more of everything to survive.

Under the licence the club on Quartermaster Road, West Wilts Trading Estate will be allowed to host events with lap dancing, stage strip teases and strip shows with full nudity.

No objections from the public were sent in to Wiltshire Council during the consultation period for the bid.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2021 includes a walking play to take audiences to city's lap dancing quarter. This will be one of the key locations in a walking audio play which will also visit the site of an old meat market, a nightclub and a job centre.

Audiences for the play, which is being designed to be experienced individually via their own mobile phones or mobile handsets collected from the Traverse, will be taken to the currently locked-up Burke and Hare lap dancing club during the show, which will be able to be downloaded from 20 August. Audiences will be able to experience the walking play Eavesdropping individually using their mobile phone or on mobile handsets which can be picked up at the Traverse Theatre.

The show is being developed by Manchester-based theatre company ThickSkin and the Traverse, with all the locations within walking distancing of the theatre, which is at the heart of Edinburgh's cultural quarter.

The event is said to be aimed at encouraging audiences to look differently at the rich tapestry of people you may walk past every day, whether you see them or not. It has been written by two Edinburgh-based playwrights Hannah Lavery and Sarah MacGillivray, and will be set to a soundtrack by composer Finn Anderson.

Strippers have accused Bristol City Council and feminist campaigners of sexist double standards for trying to ban women performing but allowing men to go ahead.

Dreamboys, an all-male collective that has spoken out in support of female strippers, is scheduled to appear at Pryzm nightclub in Bristol. The performance comes as local MPs seek to shut down all lap dancing clubs in Bristol by changing their licensing rules - with the council currently contemplating a ban on the venues.

Tuesday Laveau, who is based in Bristol and has been stripping for 16 years, told The Independent:

One of the fundamental arguments of anti-sex worker feminists is strippers and sex workers are tools of the patriarchy.

But they have no problem choosing what men do with their body. We are not mad at the Dream Boys. They are just working.

The point is the double standards of local MPs and Avon and Somerset's police commissioner. They have no issue with men behaving sexually provocatively for money.

Kings Club had its sexual entertainment licence renewed at a private meeting of Harrogate council's sub-licensing committee last September, but conditions that dancers are paid by bank transfer and do not drink alcohol were attached.

This led to an appeal being lodged by the Oxford Street venue owners who also applied for a new licence set to be decided at another meeting of the sub-committee.

With an appeal hearing at York Magistrates' Court on 28 May looming, a report to meeting said the venue has proposed new conditions in an attempt to resolve the current appeal without the time and costs associated with the determination by the Magistrates' court.

Councillors have been recommended to approve these conditions which include a ban on dancers bringing alcohol onto the premises only and a full audit trail/reconciliation account for how they are paid.

The venue accepted extra conditions already in place, including no drugs allowed on the premises, a need for each dancer to be escorted to a safe mode of transport when they leave, a written record of all fines imposed on dancers and a code of conduct.

The meeting revealed that dancers are required to pay a house fee of £25 per night and receive 70% of payments from customers. There is also a reduction in fees for dancers if they are intoxicated whilst with a customer or refuse to pole dance.

All strip clubs have been closed since March 2020 and are due to reopen on 21 June when all social distancing measures are scheduled to end.

 

Update: Dancers win back cash payments and alcoholic drinks

20th May 2021. See article from darlingtonandstocktontimes.co.uk

Harrogate's only strip club has dropped a legal challenge against the local council's onerous new licensing conditions after the council agreed to drop 2 conditions that were causing the most grief.

The council agreed to drop rules banning cash payments to dancers and banning them from accepting alcoholic drinks from customers.

Kings Club, on Oxford Street, had its sexual entertainment licence renewed by the council's sub-licensing committee last September but conditions that dancers do not drink alcohol and must be paid by bank transfer led to the owners lodging an appeal with York Magistrates' Court.

The club's legal representative argued an alcohol ban would simply finish the business due to dancers not wanting to work. He said:

We do want dancers to have the opportunity to have a drink with the customers. That is something that has always happened here. It happens in every venue nationally of this type.

Quite often customers will go into the premises and they don't even want to be dancing. They will buy a drink for a dancer and sit and talk to them.

You wouldn't get dancers coming to work here if they weren't allowed to socialise.

It was agreed by councillors today that the venue's new sexual entertainment licence would be renewed with the ban on dancers drinking alcohol and need for them to be paid by bank transfer removed.

Authorities in Blackpool have begun a process they hope will eradicate the town's lap dancing clubs for good in an attempt to make it more family friendly.

There are currently four clubs operating in the resort, but Councillor Adrian Hutton, who chairs the licensing committee, hopes that will drop to zero in the next few years. Hutton said:

Rather than the council forcing venues to cease trading immediately, it is taking a softly, softly approach. When one closes or loses its licence under its current owner we will not renew the licence for anybody else who came along.

He believes the clubs' popularity is because of stag and hen parties which can have a negative effect on Blackpool's image as a family destination:

Those in favour of preserving them argue that their existence has no negative impact on the culture of the city - and, if anything, is good for the local economy.

Toni Mansell, a stripper for ten years responded:

When the clubs do close, a number of women will inevitably lose their jobs. Sex workers are a very disenfranchised faction of people and appear to be under the chopping block all the time.

Members of Sandwell Council's licensing sub committee approved an application to renew the sexual entertainment venue licence for Angels Gentlemen's Club in the High Street for a year.

Committee members heard how there were no objections to the renewal of the licence or reports of any problems with the club since it opened.

Angels has been closed for more than a year due to the coronavirus outbreak and licensee Kulwant Singh had requested the fee for the licence -- which costs more than £3,000 be reduced.

He did not get a very positive answer to the request though.

Many industries will have difficulty recovering from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic - and the adult entertainment industry is no exception.

Colchester's strip club Climax recently went into liquidation leaving about ten erotic dancers unemployed.

A Glasgow City Council committee has voted to make sexual entertainment venues (SEV) in the city subject to a licensing regime.

Rather than ban such clubs immediately, the Licensing and Regulatory Committee said a further 18 month consultation should now begin. This will consider what a licensing regime for the clubs should look like and detail how many licences are appropriate for Glasgow.

While dancers welcomed the decision to regulate SEVs they expressed dismay at a second consultation. Megara, who has helped spearhead a campaign to save Glasgow's clubs and helped dancers unionise with GMB Scotland, said:

The number of licenses was the key thing we needed to know in order to allow dancers to breathe again safely in the knowledge they have a secure job to go to when the pandemic ends.

The new licensing regime is now scheduled to come into effect on September 24, 2022. The three existing Glasgow lap dancing clubs are expected to be granted licences by the city council under a grandfather clause.

Bristol City Council, Bristol's mayor and the Avon & Somerset police commissioner are all uniting in a proposal to ban lap dancing in Bristol.

Councillors will be asked to approve a new draft policy that would ban lap dancing venues from operating anywhere in Bristol. The proposed ban, which would go out to a 12-week public consultation, appears in an appendix of an item to be considered by the licensing committee on Monday, March 8.

It seems heartless to ban workers in a sector that has been forced to close during the last year due to coronavirus lock downs. Especially as surveys show most Bristolians are happy with them as long as they are away from certain areas, including schools , housing estates, parks, women's refuges and places of worship.

The prominent proponents of the mean minded proposal are Bristol mayor Marvin Rees, Avon & Somerset police and crime commissioner Sue Mountstevens and Bristol West MP Thangam Debbonaire .

If the policy is adopted by the council, both of the existing venues -- sister venues Urban Tiger and Central Chambers -- would be forced to close. At the two clubs' annual licence renewal hearings in 2019, pole-dancers said they were feminists also and had a right to choose how they earned a living.

The draft policy also includes the licensing of sex shops but no there no plans to change the current maximum of two each in both the city centre and Old Market/West Street and zero in other areas.

Update: Bristol Council takes the next step to banning lap dancing

10th March 2021. See article from thebristolcable.org

Passions ran high as councillors voted narrowly to send a proposed ban on lap-dancing clubs in Bristol out to public consultation.

Licensing committee members voted 7-6, with one abstention, on Monday (March 8) to ask residents and interest groups what they thought of a new draft policy setting the maximum number of sexual entertainment venues (SEVs) to zero.

But the decision, which could force the closure of the city's two city centre SEVs Urban Tiger and Central Chambers and put hundreds of mostly female jobs at risk, was described as monstrous and pandering to the views of women's rights activists on moral grounds.

Blackpool Council wants to create a monopoly for 1 sex shop to be allowed in the town and also it wants to ban any new lap dancing clubs, presumably on grounds of its view on morality.

Councillors are being asked to approve a new policy which would permit only one monopoly sex shop, and which would ban new lap dancing clubs.

Four existing clubs would be allowed to continue operating, but once those licences lapse for any reason they would not be renewed.

Licensing chiefs say the move better reflects Blackpool's aim to be a 'family' resort, and its support of the White Ribbon campaign against adult entertainment.

Members of the council's licensing committee are being asked to agree to reduce the number of permitted sex shops from the current two, down to one.

The policywill go before the council's licensing committee on Tuesday January 19 for consideration.