The Hooded Ram will not be hosting its TT festival this year in the Bottleneck car park.

We broke the news on our iomtoday website that the brewery had failed in its application to the licensing court to appoint a designated official for the event.

It emerged that Hooded Ram had not signed contracts for security staff, marquee providers or confirmed bookings for headline acts to play at the festival.

The company had sought to appoint Andrew Cross as its designated official for the event, which was due to begin in less than two weeks’ time - despite the fact he has never worked a shift for the company.

Mr Cross appeared before the licensing court, chaired by High Bailiff Jayne Hughes, on Thursday.

He confirmed, following a question from the company’s advocate Gillian Christian, that he had run the Inglewood Hotel from 2005 until 2018, during which time he was the designated official.

The police, represented by Constable Dave Trevethan, acknowledged this and said the force did not doubt Mr Cross’s suitability as a designated official, but not for an event of this size for which he had no experience.

Constable Trevethan asked how many shifts Mr Cross had worked for the Hooded Ram in its bar on the North Quay in Douglas, for which he was also applying to become a designated official.

He confirmed he had worked none so far, but may do so ’as and when needed’ after TT.

Mr Cross was asked if he knew the maximum number of festival goers allowed in the area. He said it was about 2,000 for main events and higher for others.

However, he added the company ’don’t anticipate, after last year’s event, numbers being that high’.

Constable Trevethan asked if Mr Cross had met either the security team scheduled for the event or any of the staff due to work during it.

He confirmed he had not but if he had been appointed he would do. He added there was an ’experienced team’ organising the event so there would be ’no major issues’. There were due to be 19 door staff for headline acts and slightly fewer for others, he said.

Mr Cross stated the company had planned to have extra procedures in place to prevent underage drinking in the form of ’informants’ who would be younger members of staff who could identify under-18s attempting to purchase or consume alcohol.

Constable Trevethan surprised Mr Cross and the company’s advocate when he informed them that the company they believed to be providing door staff, Protec Security Services Ltd, had contacted the police to inform them they would not be providing any staff.

contract

The officer said he had spoken to Kevin Shannon, chief executive of Protec, who said he had not received a contract from Hooded Ram and ’has no door staff for the event’.

Constable Trevethan said there was ’no way’ the Constabulary could support the application if they did not know what security arrangements would be in place.

High Bailiff Jayne Hughes agreed and criticised that the ’person put forward as designated official does not know anything of the security arrangements’.

Advocate Gillian Christian explained why the contracts for security and acts hadn’t been signed.

She said the police had contacted the Hooded Ram to explain that the group of which it is part of in the island could be reviewed as a whole following a rejection for a licence for Oddbins in April.

As a result, the company had put all of its plans on hold for TT until the police latterly confirmed they would not be seeking to review the licences. This meant May 9 was the earliest possible court date for the company to seek to install Mr Cross as the designated official.

Mrs Christian said that due to the possible action, the company did not want to ’overburden’ itself with contracts it may not need.

Mrs Hughes queried why the court was not made aware of these difficulties, including over security, before Thursday’s hearing.

Following a short adjournment to allow for the police’s submission of the communications with Protec to be discussed by the applicants, Mrs Christian confirmed the ’applicant was not aware that Protec had no security available, until now’.

She added that no contracts had been signed with Protec or the marquee providers and that if the designated official was not agreed and if Protec could not provide security ’there would be no event’.

Again Mrs Hughes criticised the position the company had put Mr Cross in, saying: ’He’s being asked to be the designated official thinking that security is in place, but it is not.’

premature

Mrs Christian said that the event would only go ahead if all of the event plan could be confirmed, repeating the company’s view that it would be ’premature’ to finalise contracts.

Mrs Hughes retorted: ’We had the Premier Inn in before yourselves and they have built a whole building before knowing if they’d get a licence. Risks have to be taken.’

Mrs Hughes said the potential police action was ’no reason not to proceed’ with an earlier application.

Event organiser Jim Brookman told the court he had been in ’regular contact’ with the police up until the hearing.

However, after the police saying they may seek to have all its licences withdrawn, the company decided to suspend its previous application in April as it felt it was unlikely that the application would have been approved, he said.

He said that it was on April 23 that the police had informed the company they would not be seeking to proceed with an attempt to remove its licences.

But he added: ’That month we put it all on hold. We spoke to contractors including Kevin Shannon at Protec and told them we were unsure what was happening.’

He also said that the company ’lost headline acts’ in that time due to being unable to confirm bookings.

When asked why the company had not come to the court to explain the situation, Mr Brookman said they ’assumed’ the police would have raised objections. He described the police’s suggestion that they may seek a suspension of licences held by the group as a ’body blow’ to its plans.

Mr Brookman confirmed the hearing was the first time the company had been made aware of that Protec would not be providing security.

Constable Trevethan said his biggest concern was that the police ’still don’t know what’s going on’.

Mrs Hughes asked Mr Brookman how many contracts had been signed, how many bar staff the Hooded Ram had confirmed and how many acts had been confirmed. To each he replied ’none’.

Mr Brookman told her that if the event had gone ahead, it would be ’watered down’ due to the inability to confirm contracts before the court hearing.

She asked him: ’How do you expect us to license this event when nothing is in place?’

Mr Brookman said he didn’t know if the event could be pulled together in time.

Mrs Hughes asked what would be the outcome if the licence could not be granted, to which he replied that the event would likely have to be cancelled and the festival would ’come back next year’.

He confirmed the company did have alcohol and the infrastructure needed, explaining it had spent a considerable sum in buying toilets, CCTV cameras, fridges and more before the 2018 festival.

nervous

Constable Trevethan said there were ’too many unknowns’ and these unanswered questions had made him ’nervous’ to support the application.

Rejecting Hooded Ram’s application, Mrs Hughes said the company had acted in an ’unprofessional and unacceptable manner’.

She said that while Mr Cross was an ’experienced designated official’ she was ’not satisfied he knows what he is being asked to take on’ and felt he did not have sufficient experience.

She added: ’There is no time to make necessary changes as any further application would have to be built from scratch’.