THE latest crime stats rank the Royal Hotel as the 43rd most violent hotel in NSW with 17 assaults recorded there for the year to March.
The Bowral pub would have to stop using glass after midnight under new rules set out by the NSW Government following the release of assault statistics.
There were 130 NSW hotels with 11 or more assaults on the list and if the Royal was still included when the next round of figures (to June) were released in September it would also have to stop service 30 minutes before closing time and hold 10 minute “time out” periods every hour after midnight to serve water and food, starting from December.
Royal Hotel licensee Drew Johnson disputed the figures that paint his establishment as the most violent place to drink in the Southern Highlands.
He said discrepancies with how assaults were recorded and the problem of linking assaults outside the hotel to the Royal, due to how police recorded them, had unfairly tarnished the reputation of his establishment.
He said he was surprised to see the Royal Hotel make the list.
Mr Johnson said the number of assaults should be closer to seven or eight and that one incident outside the hotel last year was recorded as five separate assaults.
The incident involved one man being charged with five counts of assaulting police, among eight other charges.
Mr Johnson said the hotel had been very proactive in making the Royal a safe environment and was already stopping service 30 minutes before closing and served food and water every hour after midnight.
The Royal has close to 300 patrons on a Friday night and Mr Johnson said several strategies were employed in June last year to reduce violence:
n No alcohol shots after 9pm;
n Midnight lock out ;
n Increased security;
n Additional CCTV cameras;
n Four RSA officers;
n Plastic champagne and wine glasses on Friday nights after 12am;
n Exit onto Station Street not Bong Bong Street at 2.30am closing time.
The Royal was the first hotel to have dedicated responsible service of alcohol officers monitor the hotel to identify any patrons that have had too much to drink.
The hotel was also formulating a plan to ensure it had a good safety rating and there was nowhere to hide from the additional cameras.
Having to serve beer in plastic cups would be a major blow to the Royal . Mr Johnson said patrons would go to other hotels because beer doesn’t taste as good in plastic.
Beer sales make up 60 per cent of the Royal’s bar revenue with ready to drink products making up 23 per cent.
The 22-year veteran of the hotel industry said he had seen an increase in violence among younger pub goers and attributed this to a “lack of respect for people and property”.
The Royal practised a zero tolerance policy to violence with bans ranging from three months to life for patrons who play up. Mr Johnson said more than 20 people were currently banned for life from the hotel.
Royal owner Ian Guilliford said the hotel’s incident book had only two assaults recorded from the year until June and the linking system of connecting violence to the last place someone drank was being used to unfairly target hotels.
He said more needed to be done to stamp out illicit drug use, and if better standards weren’t used to measure assaults in hotels they would stop reporting incidents to police.
“If two blokes have a bit of a push and shove that’s not really an assault,” he said.
“Licensees are going to tell their staff not to call the police unless there is a weapon involved for fear of ending up on this list.”
“We have to get the standards right.”
Mr Guilliford said most of the troublemakers were from Picton, Thirlmere and Tahmoor and most local patrons were well behaved.
NSW Australian Hotels Association director of policing and regulatory relations John Green said local licensees needed to be given the opportunity to go through the figures with local police before they were sent to the Bureau of Crime Statistics to determine which assaults actually took place inside the hotel.
“We are challenging police on how they record incidents at our hotel,” Mr Guilford said.
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