A NIGHTCLUB owner has been fined £400 for letting 149 people too many into Barbados. Howard Holland, on behalf of TGM Ltd, admitted the offence in the Magistrate’s Court yesterday.

The court heard that the club, in Lower Pollet, St Peter Port, was licensed to hold 400 people.

But at 1.10am on 29 July, police and fire safety officers found 549 clubbers in the establishment.

Assistant-Magistrate Cherry McMillen said there had been ‘potential health and safety consequences’.

She said the maximum fine for the offence was £500.

The court heard that when police and two senior fire officers attended the club in the early hours, it had been obvious that it was overcrowded.

They counted people as they left Barbados which, as a result, closed early at 1.40am.

Inspector Ian Scholes told the court that there had been 149 too many people in the club – a ‘significant breach of the licence’, he said.

The duty manager told police that he could not understand why it was so overcrowded but added that the electronic counter system had failed.

The designated official had left the premises an hour earlier to attend to family business, the court heard. He believed there had been no more than 400 people in the club at the time.

Advocate Peter Ferbrache said that Barbados had spent many thousands of pounds on safety over the years. Fire exits were found to be in good order and such a thing had never happened before, he said.

Advocate Ferbrache said that for some reason, the expensive electronic counting device had failed.

As clubbers did not pay to get into the establishment there had been no financial gain, he said.

Also, letting in too many people would cause crowding of the bar area, which would mean that customers would have difficulty getting served.

Advocate Ferbrache said that his client, who had owned Barbados for eight years, was ‘very surprised and disappointed’ and assured the court that new procedures had been put in place to ensure that such an incidentwould never happen again.

He told the court that since the start of the smoking ban, patrons have been allowed to leave the club for a cigarette and re-enter without joining the back of the queue but that was no longer the case.

Miss McMillen said she accepted the offence was out of character and that the good reputation of the limited company and nightclub had been damaged.

‘It was a complete failing, with potential health and safety consequences for the attendees,’ she said.

‘The community was failed.’