A CRIME-HIT club is to keep its licence after a doorman was seriously injured in a terrifying attack.

Astoria on Flixton Road in Urmston has seen a string of violent events since 2019 according to Greater Manchester Police, including assault, affray, fighting involving large groups of people and someone being glassed inside the venue.

One serious incident saw a doorman being ‘set upon’ by five or six members of a traveller family – resulting in the bouncer being rushed to hospital with ‘serious injuries’.

Now, to tackle the issues, the venue has been ordered to ban the use of glass after 9pm. Only plastic cups will be allowed at the venue after 9pm on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday and bank holidays to avoid any future glassing incidents and 50 per cent of all door staff will be expected to wear body cameras.

A new dress code for the venue is also being imposed, whereby no caps can be worn in the venue and any hooded garments must be worn with the hood down.

No furniture will be allowed outside the venue after 9pm, to avoid a repeat of a previous incident when a chair was thrown by a punter outside the club.

As part of evidence given by police, the premises owners said: “I would like it to be known that we have always been amenable and approachable in the sharing of information, expertise and advise when it comes to carrying out the licensing objectives.

“This being evidenced in the fact that since the reopening of the premises we have cut short our trading hours on a Friday and Saturday night.

“We will always be approachable to speak to and would much rather work with the police and licensing in respect of the objectives than against them. I appreciate that dispersal needs tightening up and this is now our main priority.

“However, not everyone on that street and seen on camera are customers of ours. There is a lot of anti-social behaviour that goes on up and down Flixton Road and just because we happen to be the last one open does not make it, always, our fault.”

GMP applied to get the venue’s licence suspended by Trafford Council after repeated call outs to incidents in, near and outside of the club.

At a licensing committee meeting, the council decided to keep Astoria’s licence in place, but put strict conditions on it instead.

Licensing committee chairman Cllr Mark Jarvis called for the owners of Astoria and GMP to work closely together to bring about the immediate change that was urgently needed at the venue.

He said: “We’ve considered the evidence from the police and also the licensee and the representative. We found a lot of the police evidence quite compelling and clearly Astoria has been very poorly run for the last 18-months with fairly drastic changes needed.

“While there was a request for suspension, we’re not going to do that. We want the licensee to engage with the police and everybody to work well together and make sure it works with the conditions.”

The conditions included some suggested by GMP – including a greater number of bouncers required on the doors, especially on Friday and Saturday nights and on bank holidays.

Cllr Jarvis added: “We’re going to leave the licensing hours as they are for now. We did consider this carefully as there is an argument for reducing them, but we’d like to see how it goes and hopefully there’s no need for a further review.

“We believe that the other measures that have been adopted will be enough to control it.”

Astoria’s owners have been given 21 days to implement the changes – they do have the right to appeal this decision and they could ask for a change of their licence in future, but likewise the police could ask for a further review of the premises licence if things don’t improve.

Cllr Jarvis added: “Things definitely do need to change and I think all sides accept that. We can’t go on as we’ve seen it, things need to change for the better.”