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Mildenhall’s Maid’s Head faces licence restrictions




The Maids Head Pub in Mildenhall Kingsway'Picture Mark Westley ANL-150728-214649009
The Maids Head Pub in Mildenhall Kingsway'Picture Mark Westley ANL-150728-214649009

A pub with a troubled past has had restrictions placed on it after police said improvements were not happening quickly enough.

The Maid’s Head in Mildenhall will have to stop music and serving drinks at 1.30am on Fridays and Saturdays and be closed by 2am.

Forest Heath’s Licensing Sub-Committee yesterday reviewed the Kingsway pub’s licence and, as well as changing opening hours, demanded that 14 conditions suggested by its owners Greene King would be applied.

They include not admitting people after 1am, having two door supervisors on Fridays and Saturdays, displaying taxi phone numbers, installing a standard of CCTV agreed with the police and establishing policies on intoxication, drug use, dealing with aggressive people and dispersing customers after the pub closes.

PC Amanda Garnham of Suffolk Police’s licensing team, outlined occasions when police were called, which included a fight in which a fence post was pulled out as a weapon and another, involving several men, in which someone was brandishing a baseball bat.

She said there had been ‘excessive intoxication’.

Meetings were held between the police, licensing authority, Greene King and the Maid’s Head’s manager Louise Malone and her son Alex and other parties to thrash out improvements.

Pc Garnham said: “We’ve got to a review because we don’t feel things have been moving quickly enough.”

She said there had been an improvement at the pub and she was pleased with the relationship with Greene King and the Malones and after a meeting on May 21 had said they needed to ‘go away and think about what they were going to do’.

She added: “But towards the end of May there was a large scale disturbance. It was a Thursday night, not even their busiest night.”

That had spurred the police to seek a review.

Local residents told the hearing of threats, noise and damage to property. The committee also had letters of complaint and support for the pub, including a petition from 79 customers.

Greene King’s solictor Piers Warne said at least five of the seven allegations of intoxication related to people who had been refused service in the pub.

He said the Malones had ‘inherited’ problems from the previous manager who had been ill.

He said: “It takes time to put things right. I asked the police ‘have things got better?’ and they said yes.”

He said Greene King and the manager had shown a willingness to work with people, had curbed noise, introduced new ways of operation .and employed new door staff.

He pointed out that some of the customers’ letter said things had changed.

Questioning the need for a review he added: “We feel we would have got there anyway,”



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