inthemix | International News | Gatecrasher gives girls free taxi rides

Superclub brand Gatecrasher are offering free taxi rides for all female groups visiting their soon to be launched club Gatecrasher Birmingham. Speaking to the Birmingham Mail, operations director Adrian Swain said they’ve been collaborating closely with local police to protect visitors to the Broad Street venue, with additional taxi services available at the club, ‘to deter patrons from using unmarked vehicles.’

The move is likely to impress safety campaigners, with unlicenced minicabs continuing to pose serious risks for passengers throughout the UK. London’s Metropolitan police report that 140 people were sexually assaulted in illegal minicabs in the capital last year. Reporting on the long standing threat in 2002 the Sunday Mirror interviewed Bryan Roland, of the National Association of Taxi and Private Hire Licensing Enforcement Officers, who conceded ‘as in any profession, there will be rogue individuals who commit appalling crimes’, throughout the UK.

“There are 451 clubs in the city and you have 120,000 people wanting to get home at the same time on a Friday or Saturday night,” he pointed out, speaking about Manchester. “If someone wants to pass themselves off as a minicab driver with a view to committing a rape, the amount of resources needed to prevent that would be so massive as to be impossible. It is up to the passengers to make sure their cab is licensed,” he added.

Manchester police chief Superintendent Garry Shewan issued a similar warning two years later, to clubbers taking risks when licenced cabs were unavailable. “Bogus drivers sometimes just want to make money by ferrying people around without getting insurance or a licence,” he told the BBC. “But a small number deliberately set out to attack lone travellers.” (BBC).

Gatecrasher Birmingham opens on September 8, promising ‘Music. Glamour. Flashing Lights’ and a music policy that ranges from ‘house to rock to hip hop to trance to drum and bass to indie to pop.’