Fareham social club gets powers to sell alcohol during the week despite neighbour's concerns

Fareham Working Men’s Club’s application to serve alcohol during the week was granted by Fareham Borough Council’s licensing panel at a meeting yesterday.

The decision means that alcohol can be served at the venue in Mill Road from Monday to Friday from 10am to 11.30pm, which is in addition to licensing hours of 10am to midnight on the weekend.

The club bosses say that the powers will be used to hold more community events and not parties.

But residents fear it will lead to acts of drunk and disorderly behaviour from patrons once they leave the club.

Karen Clark, secretary of the club, said: ‘The club is very successful but if we can open the bar from Monday to Thursday, it will allow us to hold more events, such as wakes. We’re not interested in bringing in more parties to the club as a result of this.

‘Our staff are trained and will be on hand to monitor any drunken behaviour, but we rarely have problems outside the club.’

David O’Neill, of Mill Road, said: ‘We have no objection to the club operating. It’s the after- effects of this that concern us.

‘We have heard fighting and swearing in the street. Most of the time this is minimal and we put up with this on the weekend, but we could not deal with this happening during the working week when our children are trying to sleep.’

Lucy Coates, also of Mill Road said: ‘We need clubs like this in Fareham, but they need to acknowledge their responsibility to people leaving. It’s not good enough at the moment.’

Ms Clark said in response that the club take all complaints ‘very seriously. The panel stated that, due to residents’ evidence about anti-social behaviour being ‘historic’, they could not object to the application on those grounds.