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Glasgow’s The Arches closes following licensing restrictions
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 11 June 2015
The Arches in Glasgow yesterday announced that it was closing with immediate effect, having placed itself in administration. This follows new licensing restrictions placed on the venue by the local council last month.
As previously reported, management at The Arches recently announced that they were seeking legal advice on the local authority decision to cut its licensed hours. They said that by essentially forcing it to stop running club nights, the council was cutting off 51% of the charity-run arts venue’s income.
In a statement, the chairman of the venue’s board of directors, Gordon Kennedy, said: “The board has taken professional advice and is left with no other choice than to begin the process of appointing administrators for both The Arches Theatre Ltd and Arches Retail Ltd. This decision has been taken with deep regret as it will have a major impact on our staff, business partners, customers, and on Glasgow’s reputation for night time economy”.
He added that it was hoped that this was not the end of the company entirely and that “the administrators, working with partners and stakeholders, can salvage some of the activities for which The Arches is renowned”.
The decision to restrict The Arches’ licence came after a period of monitoring by police following a number of drug and alcohol related incidents linked to the venue. However, management at The Arches expressed surprise at the council’s ruling, saying that they had complied with requests for increased safety measures and that incidents of drug misuse were at 0.14% during the period of monitoring.
Reiterating this surprise yesterday, Kennedy said: “We were disappointed and surprised at the outcome of the Licensing Board. The Arches has a zero tolerance approach to drugs and has co-operated with the police over many years. For an unprecedented six years The Arches won gold standard under the Glasgow Community Safety/Strathclyde Police Best Bar None awards – recognition of best practice in maintaining safe and well-run premises. No other venue in Scotland has achieved that”.
Executive Director Mark Anderson added that prior to its licensed hours being cut, the venue was already suffering from the restrictions it had voluntarily placed on itself based on police recommendations.
He said: “Changes to club event door policy, recommended by Police Scotland in early 2014, resulted in a major downturn in related income and a significant overall trading deficit for the year. With the Licensing Board decision effectively cutting off our main source of income, and serious uncertainty around the outcome of an appeal hearing, particularly given the clear view of Police Scotland, we have regrettably found ourselves with no ability to continue trading as a going concern”.
Commenting on the venue’s wider arts remit, Artistic Director Lucy Mason said: “The atmosphere and architecture of The Arches have helped to shape and define a generation of enquiring and vital artists. It’s shocking that this building which has inspired such creativity, devotion and ambition, should cease to exist as an arts venue”.
“The Arches has developed an international reputation as a producer and programmer of distinctive performance, providing opportunities for artists at all stages of their career to experiment and hone their practice”, she continued. “Without The Arches, the radical energy at the heart of Scotland’s theatre-making community will be greatly diminished, and the future for many individual artists suddenly feels very uncertain”.
The closure of The Arches comes less than a week after the chairman of the recently founded Night Time Industries Association, Alan D Miller, warned of increasing challenges faced by late night venues during a keynote at the Brighton Music Conference.
“If people in Britain want to go out and enjoy themselves after 10pm, there are increasing obstacles”, he said. “The latest is the wholly misguided concept of breathalysing citizens outside clubs, football stadiums and even McDonalds in Cambridge. We at The NTIA believe British citizens are decent and on the whole well behaved – as the evidence proves – and visitors to the UK are too. It’s time to champion the night time industries and to stop these wrong practices”.
The Arches itself was born out of Glasgow’s 1990 status as European City Of Culture. Its closure also comes less than a week after a new report from the IFPI and Music Canada on how music can boost a city’s wider culture and economy.
