| The proposal was among a raft of recommendations made by a special working group set up to look at the city’s evening economy, with particular emphasis on trying to reduce the level of public disorder in the city centre and the West Port/Nethergate areas in the early hours of the morning at weekends.
Nightclubs will be permitted to open for an extra hour until 3.30 am on Saturdays and Sundays, but only to serve food and non-alcoholic drinks to patrons.
In conjunction with a decision taken earlier this week by the council’s licensing committee to force late night fast food outlets in the areas to close at 2.30 am, it is hoped this will curb the mass exodus of thousands of people onto the streets at the same time, said to be leading to serious public disorder.
The food outlets would only be able to operate for the extra hour if they entered into an arrangement with nightclubs to supply food to those establishments but would not be able to sell directly to the public during that time.
It will not be until January at least that the curtailed hours for the food outlets can come into effect as that is when licences come up for renewal.
Even then, it is likely there will be appeals lodged by the outlets and the process delayed for months.
Board chairman Neil Powrie said the proposals were the culmination of a great deal of work by the working party which had involved many organisations and representative groups including the council, Tayside Police, the nightclubs, late night catering establishments and the taxi trade.
“We hope that, in time, this will prove to be a successful method of addressing the significant amount of trouble that takes place in a relatively small area of the city centre late at night,” he said.
Mr Powrie said the board wanted to see nightclubs taking advantage of the extra hour as a way of spreading the numbers of people disgorging onto the streets at closing time. He also said the problems were caused by irresponsible binge drinking and there should be education to discourage that. |
