A company offering beer bike trips around Bristol and Cardiff has been granted a licence to store its alcohol in Bath, in what police have called a “Trojan Horse scenario”.
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Beer bikes are a large cart powered by people sitting along the sides peddling, which Beer Travel Ltd uses to run hour-long drinking trips around Bristol and Cardiff.
They are an activity popular with stag and hen dos, but the police are less keen on them.
South Wales Police licensing officer PC John Crowther told a licensing hearing on Thursday 26th March: “The granting of this premises licence will have a significant effect on the streets of Cardiff.”
But the licensing hearing was not happening in Cardiff, but more than 50 miles away across the border in Bath.
Despite the fact that the bikes do not operate in Bath and there are no plans for them to, Beer Travel Ltd applied to Bath & North East Somerset Council for an alcohol licence.
Alcohol cannot legally be sold on the bikes themselves, and so is purchased in advance when booking the trip.
Beer Travel Ltd plans to use a storage container in Bath to store the alcohol, which would be transported after purchase to Bristol or Cardiff to be drunk on the bikes.
The bikes themselves do not need a licence, but the storage container does. It is technically no different in licensing law to purchasing alcohol from an online shop and having it delivered.
Police in Bristol submitted an objection to the licensing application, warning: “The entire application feels like a Trojan Horse scenario.
“It seeks to store alcohol in an out-of-the-way rather innocuous location while the overall business plan is to operate in Bristol and Cardiff.”
PC Crowther travelled from Cardiff to Bath to attend the licensing committee meeting considering the application. He said the fact that Beer Bikes Ltd had applied for a licence two counties and 56 miles from where the bikes were operating in Cardiff appeared to be “a deliberate attempt to subvert the licensing act”.
But solicitor Chris Grunert, representing Beer Travel Ltd, said the application was “no way a card trick or some sort of magic trick to try to deceive” and that there were economic reasons for storing the alcohol in Bath.
He said the beer bikes could operate on a bring your own beer basis with no licence at all, but that the company wanted to get a licence and act within a regulated environment. He said: “We are doing exactly what we should be doing.”
Ahead of the meeting, police and the applicant agreed on 31 conditions which Beer Travel Ltd said it would accept as part of the licence, regulating conduct on board the bikes as well as around the container.
PC Crowther ultimately said he would prefer the beer bikes to operate with a licence that was subject to the conditions, than it to continue to be unregulated.
Chair of the licensing committee, Steve Hedges (Combe Down, Liberal Democrat), had to repeatedly remind the meeting that the council was only able to consider issues about the licensing of the storage container and that it had no power over the beer bikes in Bristol and Cardiff.
PC Crowther raised concerns about “all you can drink” being used as a slogan on the websites, advertising videos which he said showed beer being drunk through traffic cones, public nuisance, traffic tailbacks, and the possibility of public urination.
He said: “The drinking of the alcohol is not a licensable activity — but it is most definitely where the risk lies.”
He added that Beer Travel Ltd had never contacted South Wales Police licensing officers or Cardiff City Council’s licensing department despite operating in Cardiff.
The police in Cardiff had only become aware that the beer bikes were operating in the city in February, when a colleague spotted one.
PC Crowther said that the advertised pick up point for the beer bikes was 8 Fitzroy Street, a student let on a residential street in the Cathays area of the city.
He said he had spoken to the students who lived there and they were unaware it was the designated pick up point, as were the letting agents and the building’s owner.
Mr Grunert said that hiring a beer bike was “more of a sober affair” than depicted in the adverts and that public urination would not be tolerated. He said: “We do take very seriously the care of our customers when they are on the bikes with us.”
He added that Beer Travel Ltd had run over 400 trips in Bristol and Cardiff and said: “This has been going for a couple of years and you never had an issue with it.”
The licensing committee agreed to grant the licence. The storage container, which will only be accessed by Beer Travel Ltd staff, is located in the Twerton area of the city near Bath City FC’s home at Twerton Park.
John Wimperis, Local Democracy Reporter
