Sex Shops in Cornwall

A sex shop application has sparked nutter 'outrage' from residents and retailers in a Cornish city.

The company Mrs Palm Limited wants to open the store in Little Castle Street, Truro. Mrs Palm said it would be a lawful business, properly licensed by Cornwall Council in according with its trading rules.

Company spokesman Braxton Reynolds said Little Castle Street had been chosen because it was a specialist shopping area and as such was appropriate.

Concerns have been strongly expressed about what might be seen by passers-by in the window, company spokesman Braxton Reynolds said: But the standard rules apply to all such establishments is that nothing that will cause offence can be displayed in the window.

The manageress of the school outfitter Trevails said she was really 'shocked' at the distasteful sex shop application. We don't want something like that next door, Vicky Trevail said: We've got young children probably from the age of three up to 16 or 17, so no, no, it's definitely no from the Trevail family and no from me. We're a cathedral city, we live in a nice street here and we're all friendly and neighbourly. I mean live and let live ...BUT... put it somewhere else.

Jackie Hill, who runs the Limelite Costume Shop on the other side of where the sex shop would be, said she intends to start a petition against the application: You don't need it shoved in your face. You can get everything you want online if you really want it and it's the clients that are going to be using the shop that really worry me.

Nutter 'anger' over an application to open a sex shop in Truro has sparked a letter-writing campaign to Cornwall Council's licensing committee.

90+ complaints have been made opposing a move by Mrs Palm Ltd from setting up next to a school uniform store in Little Castle Street.

Much of the campaign has been led by Vicky Trevail, manager of Trevail's uniform shop, who recently collected a 700-name petition.

Many of the letters come from schools and church groups, arguing that such a store is 'inappropriate' in the planned location because of its proximity to a shop used by children and its position on a bus route.

Among them was one from The Christian Institute which said that it was out of character with the area as a locality characterised by tourist attractions, restaurants and cafés, shops and other businesses. It added: It is, therefore, not the sort of place which is suitable for a sex shop.

Many of the letters will have to be discarded because they focus on the moral aspect of having such a store.

Edward Braxton Reynolds speaks in favour of the application. He wrote: Garments and other suitable products sympathetically and appropriately displayed in a shop window can be informative without any risk of causing offence. He added anyone under-age who persistently attempted to enter would either be prosecuted or face an injunction.

Complaining about the proposed sex shop one correspondent wrote: I wish to object moist (sic) strongly. It was just one of a number of unintentional errors, musings and in some cases just funny missives sent to licensing officer Julie Flower, who is dealing with the case.

Some were more graphic in their depiction of the likely clientele: I would reiterate that some people will find it awkward, perhaps even disturbing, to bump into sexually aroused men going to and from a sex establishment.

A sex shop has been given the go-ahead to open in Truro.

Mrs Palm Ltd has been granted a license to open the shop in Little Castle Street, next door to Trevails, a school uniform shop that led the nutter campaign against the sex shop application.

Cornwall Council's miscellaneous licenses committee granted permission at a meeting last Friday.

Mrs Palm
5 Little Castle Street
Truro
TR1 3DL

A christian nutter group is challenging the licensing of Truro's first licensed sex shop which opened its doors for the first time last weekend.

Campaigners won a case to secure a judicial review of Cornwall Council's decision to grant the licence.

And the council has said it will not defend the legal challenge, which could see Mrs Palm Ltd shut if the case goes ahead.

City councillor Armorel Carlyon and the Christian Institute launched action in the High Court, claiming procedures were not followed correctly at the original hearing when the licence was granted in August.

The issue is believed to centre on two key elements of the hearing. The first was the decision to disregard many of the letters of objection on the grounds that they focused on the morality of the shop.

The second was that the committee did not take into sufficient account the location of the sex shop, which is next door to school outfitters Trevails in Little Castle Street.

A council spokesman said: The council, having considered the matter carefully, has decided not to contest the judicial review. How the interested party, Mrs Palm Limited, decides to proceed in these circumstances is a matter for them.

Simon Calvert, deputy director of the Christian Institute who led its campaign against the shop's licence, said: The decision by the council not to contest the case reflects the strength of our case.

The move by Cornwall Council not to defend the licensing committee's decision surprised Mrs Palm's directors. Owner Braxton Reynolds said: As a licensee I would have expected Cornwall Council to have defended the position of their licensee.

The case will now go before a judge who will decide if there are enough grounds to grant the review. If given approval then a judicial review will probably be heard late next year.

In the meantime, however, a licensing committee hearing has allowed the premises to extend its hours for late night Christmas shopping. It will now be allowed to open until 9.30pm every Wednesday – three hours later than normal under the terms of the original licence. Councillors also agreed it could include the street number and drop the word Ltd from its sign but drew the line at replacing it with a website address.

Let's put Christ back into Christmas

Mrs Palm
5 Little Castle Street
Truro
TR1 3DL

This my shop Mrs Palm in Truro on the busy shopping day of Saturday 27th November and along comes the catholic church to block my window and tell people untrue rumours that myself and my shop were involved in the recent child sex abuse case in Cornwall that is all over the news.

The Christian Institute will not give up their attempt to see me shut down, and now I have the Catholic Church harassing on a nearly daily basis.

The nun pictured came into the shop the day before to tell me I was disgusting and so was the shop.

The week before I had a cross drawn on the window and photos taken of my window display of which I was told by the church member taking the shots that my window dummies were prostitutes. The photos they took were then on the Cornwall council's desk that same morning, with a complaint.

I put a sign in my window saying Mrs Palm licensed sex shop opening soon and was told to take it out as it offended the church, and then told by the licensing committee that I would not be allowed to display my website address on my shop fascia because of the church!

I had one hundred letters of objections, all of which were unfounded moralising and completely bigoted.

I have been told by letter that I am obviously a ex porn star druggie that has been abused by black men....

So not a day goes by without a little drama..

Out of every negative there comes a positive though, and since I seem to hit the local paper every week its created a lot of support form strangers, it's bringing in the customers through all the furore, curiosity and it's getting me lots of free publicity.

All good for business.

Hallelujah.

Mrs Palm, A sex shop that opened up next door to a school uniform store in Truro, Cornwall, will face a courtroom trial after Christian nutters won permission to challenge the licensing decision.

The High Court have now given permission for a judicial review of Cornwall Council's decision to grant a licence. Judicial reviews allow a court to decide whether a public body has acted according to law.

The legal action against the Council has been taken by Truro resident and Christian nutter, Armorel Carlyon, and The Christian Institute. They claim that Cornwall Council disregarded relevant material relating to the suitability of the location.

They also claim that the Council failed to give adequate reasons for concluding that the location was suitable for a sex shop even though it was next door to a school uniform store. [Usually the nutters are happy that councils provides trivial justifications masking their morality decisions].

Cornwall Council is not contesting the case, but the sex shop owner is. A date has not yet been set for a hearing.

As reported earlier, the Christian Institute (CI) and city councillor Armorel Carlyon have been told their application regarding the Truro sex shop Mrs Palm will now go to judicial review. Judges will decide whether Cornwall Council acted unlawfully in granting the shop a licence.

Nutters at the time contended that being next to school uniform shop Trevails was somehow enough to get a licence refused. They lodged about 100 objections with the council, but most were disregarded on grounds of morality being irrelevant to licensing decisions.

Simon Calvert, of the CI, said: This confirms there is a case to answer here. Part of it is that its location is next to a school uniform shop and that the content of some objections, which was relevant to the case, was treated as irrelevant. If we win it will have implications for other sex shops around the country, allowing them to be challenged for being in inappropriate places.

Cornwall Council has said it will not contest the case, a move which could later leave it open to legal action by the sex shop's owners, who began trading in November after obtaining a ten-year lease on the property.

Braxton Reynolds, joint owner of the shop, said the case was unlikely to go before the courts until October at the earliest, by which time the shop's licence would already have been subject to its first annual review.

Reynolds said he did not envisage any circumstances under which the renewal would be refused. All a judicial review can tell the granting authority to do is go back and re-determine the original licence, and that will probably be taking place after the first annual renewal, he said: I addressed all the issues of objection in my own submission. The only arguments that were dismissed were essentially on moral grounds, and they were not legally admissible.

Truro's Mrs. Palm sex shop has been told it can remain open, despite its licence being withdrawn by Cornwall Council. The shop was given a waiver to carry on trading after legal advice.

The licensing committee granted the Little Castle Street store a right to trade in R-18 material in August 2010 after overriding the former Carrick District Council's decision to refuse a licence.

However, the ruling was challenged by the Christian Institute and city councillor Armorel Carlyon who have sought a judicial review, prompting Cornwall Council to seek legal advice. The county's legal 'expert', Philip Kolvin QC, said in his view the licensing committee was wrong to dismiss Carrick's refusal, even though it was officially reviewed in January this year. He also bizarrely argued that the committee should not have rejected numerous moral objections which were originally thrown out on legal advice.

The resultant Cornwall Council decision to revoke the licence could have closed down the shop. However, joint owner Braxton Reynolds applied for an emergency waiver. Reynolds argued he had taken a lease on the premises and fitted it out in good faith after being granted the licence.

He added Mrs Palm had received no official complaints and been exceptionally careful to adhere to the terms of trading. The licensing committee voted seven to one to grant a waiver.

Reynolds said he was losing patience with the Christian Institute's continuing war against him and warned the action could be considered vexatious.

Truro's sex shop will stay open for the short term despite the Christian Institute's (CI) attempts to stop it trading immediately.

The High Court threw out the mean minded action brought by the nutter group and city councillor Armorel Carlyon against the Mrs Palm sex shop.

The shop was given a licence in September last year by the new unitary authority, Cornwall Council, who had overturned the previous Carrick District Council's zero sex shop policy.

However nutter pressure resulted in a change of heart about granting the licence, and the council somehow obtained new, and unlikely sounding, legal advice that the new council should not have overruled the old council. The council withdrew the shop's licence, but perhaps realising the somewhat shaky ground and unfairness to the shop, granted a licence waiver. This allows the shop to continue trading until the whole mess is examined by the High Court in a Judicial Review on 21st September 2011.

However the christian busy-bodies couldn't wait this long, and asked the court to terminate the waiver.  but the Hon Mr Justice Hickinbottom ruled in favour of Cornwall Council's decision to grant the waiver. The CI was also ordered to pay Cornwall Council's costs in full, estimated at £8,000.

The judge also stayed the scheduled judicial review into the granting of the licence, effectively saying that the licensing process was followed correctly and that the licence stands without need of further review.

Joint owner of the shop, Braxton Reynolds said:

I'm relieved that Mr Justice Hickinbottom found in favour of the decision of the council that the business, for which no regulatory issues at all have been raised, should be allowed to trade and that it would be unfair and unreasonable to stop us trading for a few weeks. It would be commercially inappropriate.

Speaking after the High Court ruling Mike Judge, head of communications at CI, said:

We're disappointed because we felt having accepted that granting of the licence was unlawful, and particularly because of the location, it shouldn't be allowed to remain open without a licence.

The legislation says the council has to take into consideration the suitability of the location. If right next door to a school uniform shop is regarded as somewhere suitable then anywhere is suitable, it makes a mockery of the law.

Rather bizarrely, the redetermination of the licence hearing is expected to take place on September 7 in St Austell, a couple of weeks before the High Court Judicial Review on 21st September.

Update: A Miserable Christian Voice

2nd September 2011. See article from christianvoiceuk.blogspot.com

Stephen Green's Christian Voice have written on their blog:

Oppose Sex-Shop in Cornwall

Christian campaigners are praying for a large turn-out in St Austell on Wednesday 7th September for the hearing of a sex-shop application.

The meeting will be held in Restormel District Council Chamber, 39 Penwinnick Road, St Austell, PL25 5DR, at 10.00am. The sex-shop itself is in Little Castle Street, Truro, next to a shop selling school uniforms about 200 yards from the Cathedral.

PRAY: For a large number of Christians and concerned parents and residents to attend the licensing committee on 7th September. That the Licensing Committee will overturn its previous decision and refuse a license for the sex-shop. Pray for the fear of God, or at least some consideration of the welfare of children, to inform the committee.

WRITE: The time for formal objections having passed, write or email the members of the Miscellaneous Licensing Committee being respectful but firm in urging them to reject the proposal for a sex shop in Truro as inappropriate for the City and locality.

Update: Licensed Again

9th September 2011. See article from christian.org.uk

A sex shop licence has been granted for a second time to the Mrs Palm sex shop. However, the sex shop failed to get permission for an expansion.

The licensing committee of Cornwall Council decided to rehear the application, after it changed its mind about awarding the previous licence. Nutter pressure had led to supposed concerns that it should have followed policy set by the outgoing council.

After rehearing the application yesterday, the licence was granted despite some local nutters and Truro City Council being opposed to the move.

Responding to news that the licence has been granted for the second time, The Christian Institute's Mike Judge said:

We're obviously disappointed at the result. It's a decision that ignores local democracy, and ignores common sense. The law gives local authorities the power to refuse sex shop licences for locations that are unsuitable. If next door to a school uniform store isn't unsuitable, I don't know what is.

Mrs Palm manager Nicky Hewett said:

It had been a testing few months. No-one that has actually come into the shop has ever found anything offensive in here at all, everything is licensed goods and we are lawfully allowed to sell them.