A shisha lounge’s opening hours have been reduced after stabbings, armed robberies and large-scale fights have all taken place in its vicinity over the last year-and-a-half.
On August 26, Greenwich Council’s Licensing Review Sub-Committee conducted a premises licence review for Hayatt Lounge, a shisha lounge and late-night venue in Charlton at 114 to 126 Westmoor Street.
Police applied to reduce Hayatt’s opening hours to a 1.30am closing time due to the criminal incidents, an outcome Hayatt claimed would “kill the business”. The venue argued that police needed to step up their response to the incidents in order to protect its staff and customers.
In a sort of compromise between the two parties, the committee decided to bring forward Hayatt’s closing time by an hour each day. The lounge will now close at 3am on Monday to Wednesday and 4am on Thursday to Sunday, with licensable activities ceasing half an hour before.
Staff member ‘hit heavily over the head with a canister of nitrous oxide gas’
David Graham, the legal representative of the Metropolitan Police, said at the licence review that there had been 13 instances of serious crime and disorder that had taken place in the vicinity of Hayatt since February 2024.
These included two men being stabbed after trying to break up a fight, a Hayatt customer being robbed of his jewellery at gun point before being pistol whipped, and another man being robbed by four masked men, one of whom had a machete, right outside the venue.
Mr Graham also spoke of a brawl outside Hayatt that involved up to 50 people in April, and in June, a man returned to the venue after being ejected by security staff which resulted in a fight involving up to 40 people. During this second fight, a member of the security team was stabbed.
The most recent incident of assault—which sparked the licence review—took place in the early morning of Sunday, July 27. A security staff member “was hit heavily over the head with a canister of nitrous oxide gas” which broke his jaw and left him with a bleed on the brain. Police have since confirmed that the victim is out of coma and is not in a life-threatening condition.
Mr Graham set out the police’s case. He said, quoting a police officer: “What has prompted this review is not a lack of cooperation or failures on the part of Hayatt Lounge, but rather the sheer volume of crime that can be attributed to the premises because of the availability of licensable activities.”
He stated that police wanted Hayatt to cease all licensed activities at 1am, with all customers gone by 1.30am, and to remove the venue’s ability for vertical drinking. Police also wanted to remove dance and live performances and to ensure that music was at a background level only.
Mr Graham added: “We believe that these premises can be run in a way that does not undermine the licensing objective, but the fundamental issue here is the late-night operating model which is creating conflict with security staff and it is attracting violent and armed people into this immediate area and resulting in commission of serious offences.”
Hayatt doing a ‘fantastic job’
Cllr Ann-Marie Cousins asked police why more officers and resources had not been committed to try and curtail the crime that occurred near Hayatt. In response, Mr Graham asked whether it was right that this venue should be placing an “extra burden” on the police who would have to come up with a “bespoke plan where they have more officers assigned in the early hours of the morning to this particular site because it is causing crime”, a notion he called “perverse”.
Cllr Cousins defended Hayatt because of the work it has been doing to try and prevent crime occurring outside the venue. She said: “You’ve got management that everyone is acknowledging is doing a fantastic job on their premises. It is one or two clients who are occasionally getting into trouble. It is not everyone.”
PC Mindaugas Alsaukas, who applied for the venue’s licence review, said he had a good relationship with Hayatt’s management and had never had any issues of cooperation when crime had taken place near or at the venue.
Venue would risk closure if it had to shut earlier
In his submission, Hayatt’s legal representative Gary Grant said: “The reasonable remedy for a migraine is not always a beheading, but that is the police’s submission to you today.”
He said that the premises “would not survive” with a 1.30am licence, and this was evidenced by Hayatt’s footfall decreasing by 74 per cent since an interim order limiting their hours was issued on July 31.
Mr Grant said: “Lets look at the problems and work out if they are connected to the mismanagement of this premises. All parties accept that this is not the case here. This is a well-managed, effectively-managed late-night venue.”
Mr Grant said it was not unreasonable to expect the Met, as “guardians of the prevention of crime and disorder” to step up their response to the repeated instances of crime, just as the venue is willing to do. Extra precautions Hayatt was willing to offer included increasing the number of security staff, employing a dedicated CCTV operator and seven street marshals on weekends to patrol the immediate vicinity, and even using a drone camera to survey the surrounding area.
Mr Grant said the majority of the criminal incidents in question occurred either when door staff complied with licensing conditions and “banned troublemakers from entering” or when “villains from outside travel in to prey on our customers”.
In response to police not wanting to commit extra resources to monitor the venue, Mr Grant said: “You do not close late-night premises because the police do not have the resources, or more likely, they do have the resources but they are not prepared to prioritise this particular area during these hours. That is a police resource problem, and if we ran our licensing system according to police resources, just about every licensed venue would have to close its doors.”
Mr Grant said Hayatt was in discussions with police following an incident in June on how the premises and officers could work in collaboration to reduce crime. Certain conditions were drawn up the week before the July 27 incident, but these discussions broke down after the assault occurred, which Mr Grant said had only taken place because a security guard was doing his job and had tried to rightfully stop someone undesirable from getting in.
‘We need and want the police support’
He said: “The reasonable approach is to work with us. We need the police support, we want the support and we’ve asked for the support because if this is a venue that is attracting criminal elements who prey on our customers, then that is a policing matter to work in collaboration with us.”
Mr Graham disputed Mr Grant’s claims that these new conditions were received in July, instead stating that police received them on August 20, which was nearly a month after PC Alsaukas applied for the licence review. “It isn’t right to suggest that they’re the ones who’ve been proactive here,” he said.
“They’re reacting to the fact that this review has been brought and it has identified substantial issues as they have accepted.”
Hayatt general manager Gemma Creamer said the venue had sent conditions to the police, but PC Alsaukas had “ignored” them. She also did not understand how the police’s additional conditions of stopping vertical drinking and live performances would prevent crime, saying that would “ruin the very vibe which customers come to Hayatt Lounge for”.
Mr Grant also wanted the committee to consider “the future of this extremely popular venue, one whose representors within your papers have spoken extremely highly, given its value to the community, and in particular the West African and Caribbean community who it primarily serves” and the 50 Hayatt employees who were waiting on the committee’s decision “to know if they have a job tomorrow”.
He added: “We ask that the 104,000 people who attend this venue peacefully each year are not having their entertainment areas ruined because a tiny minority of criminals are focusing on our customers and our security guards.”
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