Wisbech café owner who bought vodka from a ‘street seller’ has licence suspended

A café owner has had his alcohol licence suspended after admitting to buying a bottle of vodka from a ‘street seller’ for £10.

Constantino Almeida, who runs the Delicious Snack Bar in Hill Street, Wisbech, now has 21 days to appeal the suspension before magistrates at Peterborough.

If he fails to appeal or if he loses any appeal he makes then his licence will be automatically suspended for 28 days, Fenland’s licensing committee, which met today, also removed him as the Designated Premises Supervisor.

The committee made its decision at an hour-long meeting at Fenland Hall where members heard evidence from both the council’s licensing officer, Andy Fox, and PC Paul Hawkins, representing Cambridgeshire Police, who had asked for Mr Almeida’s licence to be reviewed.

The police had requested the review following breaches of a number of conditions of the licence including one that specifically states: “No alcoholic drinks will be purchased by the store owners or staff from sellers calling at the store.”

During the hearing councillors were shown video footage captured on the body camera of PC Josh Yeomans, who visited the café on May 11.

In it, and while under caution, Mr Almeida is seen admitted to buying the vodka worth £22.99 for £10 saying he had bought it from a regular customer.

It transpired the vodka had been purchased using a stolen debit card taken from another premises in the town.

However, despite one of the other conditions of his licence being to have a fully-functioning CCTV system in the café, there was no footage of the purchase as it was discovered Mr Almeida did not know how it worked.

The hearing heard the person who sold the vodka has not been identified, and therefore has not been caught.

Mr Fox told the meeting: “Mr Almeida was asked to demonstrate to the officers the CCTV footage for May 10, 2024 - he advised he was unable to operate the system and called a friend, who attended, and it was established that the footage could not be played back and that nothing appeared to be stored on the hard drive.”

The system was seized by the police and a forensic examination established the hard drive was completely blank and contained no retrievable data.

Police alleged other conditions were also being breached including lack of training of staff, maintenance of records of incidents, and of refusals to sell alcohol.

PC Hawkins said due to the breaches identified he issued a notice via email on June 4 informing Mr Almeida that the premises was to stop selling alcohol immediately until all conditions were met.”

He told the meeting that while the order was in place he had received a tip-off on June 12 that Mr Almeida was continuing to serve alcohol on the premises, decanting products into disposable coffee cups.

However, this was denied by Mr Almeida when confronted by Mr Fox, the licencing officer, and there was no proof of any offences.

Mr Almeida had drafted in help from Raymond Pearson, a business consultant, who had supported him in his original application for the licence and in setting up his.

Mr Pearson, who spoke on behalf of Mr Almeida, at the hearing said they had since called in experts to install a new CCTV system and all staff had been trained in how to use it, so footage would now always be immediately available.

He said he had also explained to Mr Almeida that he was not to buy alcohol from anywhere other than a legitimate outlet, and he had also had the licensing conditions translated into Portuguese to ensure he understood them fully.

Mr Pearson said that since the incident, and the new regime, there had been no further breaches.