Sheffield City Council has now given the ‘Determination Notice’ over its decision to relicense its Spearmint Rhino strip club, 2 weeks ago despite over 200 breaches. This Notice sets out why the Council relicensed the club and how it is going to stop these breaches from ever, ever happening again.
In this Notice, the Council appears to believe the club’s location, on University campus, close to centres for vulnerable people including children, is entirely appropriate; that objectification is actually pro-equalities if a woman choses it and that the testimony of those who say they feel ‘safer’ because of the club is of equal consideration as those who report such fear of harassment that they have to stop using the surrounding area altogether.
As for improved regulation, the only measure it seems to have introduced is more CCTV. Oh but this will be checked more often. This is despite 100s of written objections explaining how utterly meaningless this is, given that Spearmint Rhino Camden has 63 CCTV cameras that are checked regularly, yet when undercover investigators visited here they again found sexual contact as standard, women giving out their phone numbers and pimps outside.
