Booze And Gamble Until Dawn At Stanley Casino
Gamblers at Wirral's only casino will be allowed to booze and gamble until dawn if the borough's first application for extended drinking hours gets the thumbs-up.
The application from Stanley Casino is to extend weekday-drinking hours from the current 2am closing time to the much later 6am.
The earliest closing time all week will be 4am in the early hours of Sundays.
It is the first through-the-night request received by the borough and is expected to open the floodgates for a raft of similar applications from licensed premises across Wirral.
The JD Wetherspoon chain - which operates five popular bars in Wallasey, Moreton, Birkenhead, Hoylake and West Kirby - has already confirmed it will apply to start serving booze from 9am, as exclu-sively revealed in the Globe last month.
Stanley Casinos Limited, which operates the borough's only casino on Oxton Road in Birkenhead, lodged its controversial application on May 3.
Details of the application have now been forwarded to the police, environmental health, trading standards, child protection and the fire and planning committee.
As with anyone else who wishes to lodge a protest against it, they only have until June 2 to do so.
The proposal, along with any objections received, is then expected to go before the licensing committee a couple of weeks later.
A final decision will more than likely have to be runner-stamped by a full council meeting a short time after that.
Councillor Andrew Hodson, chairman of the council's licesing committee, said: "As I've said before, there is a new law in force now and we have to judge each application we receive within the framework of that law.
"What we as a council have to do is make sure that every possible interested party is infor-med in advance so that they have enough time to prepare any representations they wish to make.
"Any objections or comments received by the required date will of course be considered in full by the committee."
A spokesman for Alcohol Concern said: "We have consistently objected to the idea of extended drinking hours as we believe there are already far too many people with alcohol problems in this country.
"The only argument in favour of it as far as we can see is for people who work night shifts and may want a drink on their way home.
"However, they are comp-aratively rare cases which we don't think merit a change in the law. The bottom line is that as a society we're encouraging people to drink more, not less, and that can only lead to more problems."
A Gamblers Anonymous spokes-man told the Globe: "Our primary concern is to get people off gambling. Whether people see extended drinking hours as helpful or otherwise to our cause is a matter for them."
