Nightclub bans entire town

A nightclub has sparked anger after banning an entire town from entering.

Door staff at Creation in West Street, Brighton, told The Argus Crawley's "troublemakers" were no longer welcome.

Clubbers from the town, which has 35,000 18 to 40-year-olds, last night dismissed the ban as snobbery.
Head doorman Martyn Richardson said: "I only have one area ban and that's Crawley. We don't admit people from there. After we did it, the seafront clubs started telling me they were getting troublemakers from Crawley and we realised it was because we weren't letting them in here any more."

Creation has been turning away Crawley revellers for months by checking the ID of everybody who comes through the doors - and the head doorman said the policy was helping to drive down crime.

Mr Richardson, of Leisuresec, the country's largest supplier of security doormen, said a range of zero tolerance policies had reduced offences in the club by 73 per cent over 18 months.

A police officer from Operation Marble, which tackles booze-fuelled trouble in the notorious hot spots of West Street and the Lower Esplanade, told The Argus that crime had rocketed in Brighton in March when Brannigans nightclub in London Road, Crawley, closed for a month.

He said: "When the Crawley nightclub closed it took us a month to realise why crime had gone up."

The Sex Discrimination Act 1975 makes it unlawful for pubs and nightclubs that are open to the public to discriminate on the ground of sex when providing goods, facilities and services, even if they are free.

But the Equal Opportunities Commission said barring a town's entire population was unlikely to be against any discrimination law.