Call to curb abuse of Covid licensing regulations

Hospitality Ulster (HU) has called for the introduction of enforcement powers to help tackle rogue licensed premises that are not abiding by current Covid-19 regulations.

Speaking yesterday, HU chief executive, Colin Neill, told local hospitality operators that they should consider all the advice issued by government to be ‘instructions’ and warned that if the virus was not brought under control in Northern Ireland, the indicative opening date of September 1 for wet pubs here was ‘unlikely’ to be confirmed.

‘Irresponsible behaviour could drive a further increase in the virus and result in the entire sector being closed again,’ he cautioned.

‘The vast majority of our industry have and continue to act responsibly, but we need urgent action by the NI Executive to reinforce our calls with legal measures, as rogue businesses will just ignore these calls and undermine the actions of the responsible majority.’

Speaking to LCN at the beginning of this week, Mr Neill did concede that there were ‘rogues in the trade’:

‘All we have is anecdotal evidence, but if it is happening, then prosecute them’, he went on. ‘Don’t stand by and tar everyone with the same brush. The problem is that there are no powers, a lot of what we have now is really just guidance and that is something that really needs to be addressed.’

Ballymena publican, Carol McKenna, who runs the Grouse bar and restaurant and the Smoking Monkey sports bar with her husband, Eugene, told this magazine that she understood there were some pubs in her area which had been trading illegally right through the lockdown period.

‘We opened our premises again on July 3 and we are naturally well spaced out so we are able to accommodate a lot of people, but we still lost about 30 of our regular customers on a daily basis because they didn’t want to pay for a meal when they could just go and sit in one of these other wee pubs that were open,’ said Carol.

Ballymena is in the Mid and East Antrim Borough Council area, which is one of those regions particularly badly affected by Covid-19. Carol is worried by the financial impact that any further localised lockdown would undoubtedly have on the business:

‘We furloughed all of our staff, about 40 of them, but that has still cost us 20 per cent of their holidays which continue to accrue. If we lockdown again, it will be worse. We have lost a lot of stock already, a lot of food and alcohol. We have ongoing costs to keep fridges running and our insurance has also doubled, so there is still a lot of outlay,’ she went on.

‘It’s worrying and it’s annoying. We are totally behind these measures to stop Covid, in fact we voluntarily closed our premises before lockdown, but it is these other places that are not being responsible that are the problem.’