Plans to host a DJ night at a derelict site in Barrow have been turned down by the council.
The event would potentially have seen hundreds of people descend on Salthouse Mills on the evening of September 3. Bosses at Pitch Up Events Ltd said they wanted to ‘reimagine’ and ‘transform’ the space.
But the ‘Salthaus Project’ scheme fell foul of concerns over safety and noise nuisance.
Sergeant Joanne Smith told Tuesday’s meeting of the borough council’s licensing sub-committee: “It’s near to the docks, there’s a risk of people falling into the water, going into the water.”
The meeting heard the site was littered with scrap metal.
Sergeant Smith said people could get into alcohol-fuelled arguments and use the debris as weapons. “The area is not well-lit which, to me, poses a risk of violence against women and girls,” she said.
She said the site was renowned for flooding and that this posed a risk to emergency service vehicles.
He said lighting would be installed and referred to ‘ongoing works’ that were taking place to address the uneven surface at the site. “If it’s wet and there’s standing water and we think it’s unsafe, it won’t go ahead,” he said.
He told councillors he ‘couldn’t think of a better event space inside the town’ than Salthouse Mills.
Geoff Dowker, who works in environmental protection at the council, said there was potentially asbestos on the site and that environmental health would have wanted sampling to have been done.
He said this was requested from the applicant but had not been provided by the time of the meeting.
An application for a temporary event notice was seeking permission for the sale of alcohol and the ‘provision of regulated entertainment (live and recorded music)’ between the hours of 1pm and 11pm on Saturday, September 3.
The council issued a counter notice, preventing the event from going ahead.
Licensing sub-committee chairman Councillor Bill McEwan said concerns over noise from music and people leaving the event were a factor in the decision.
Mr Howden vowed that Pitch Up Events would ‘keep trying’.
Hamza Kadeen, who works in investments and acquisition at Hiltongrove, which owns the site, said: “If the council doesn’t help us make Salthouse a better place, then how can we do anything?”
