On Halloween night an 18-year-old female customer was removed from the long queue to Heaven for drunkenness and, it is alleged, was then taken to a nearby car and raped by a door supervisor employed at Heaven who was using counterfeit SIA credentials.

The Metropolitan Police instigated a Summary Review of the Premises Licence under section 53A of the Licensing Act 2003 on the grounds that the premises was associated with serious crime. The case raised safeguarding and welfare concerns of the utmost seriousness and went to the heart of Westminster City Council’s Women’s Night Safety Programme.

At a contested hearing, the licensing sub-committee of Westminster City Council agreed to suspend Heaven’s premises licence as an interim step pending the full review hearing. Days later, Heaven challenged that interim suspension and, after a further contested hearing, the Council, once again, determined the licence should remain suspended pending the full review.

Representatives of Heaven and the Metropolitan Police engaged extensively prior to the full review hearing which was held on 6 December 2024. This resulted in a series of robust conditions being agreed between the police and nightclub that would enable the venue to re-open, but in a safer manner than before.

There were several thousand further individuals who made representations both in support of Heaven nightclub and against it. In perhaps the first example of its type, submissions were made to the Council that a number of these representations had been created by AI and were a forgery.

The Council also had to consider the interaction between the Licensing Act 2003 and Public Sector Equality Duty imposed by section 149 of the Equality Act 2010.

The case has been widely reported in the national press (for example):

BBC

Daily Mail

Evening Standard

The Guardian

Michael Feeney of FTB acted for the Metropolitan Police at the initial interim steps hearing. Gary Grant of FTB acted for the Metropolitan Police at the interim steps challenge and full review hearings. Both were instructed by Tracy Wisbey of the Metropolitan Police’s Legal Services Department.