Rainbow Venues to close for good after having license Revoked

Sad News, as Rainbow Venues, in Lower Trinity Street, Digbeth, Birmingham is to close after having its licence revoke today, by the licensing sub-committee bosses at Birmingham City Council, following a teenager’s drug-related death.

Student Michael Trueman, 19, was understood to have taken MDMA, at a Halloween event, the tragedy was the second drug-related death in two years following Dylan Booth, who died after taking ecstasy in 2015.

PC Abdool Rohomon, representing West Midlands Police, said: “We have no option but to call for Rainbow’s license to be revoked. This is the second drug related death at the venue in two years and we have evidence that a 15-year-old boy has been admitted to the venue. There are around 3,000 licensed premises in Birmingham and this is the only venue which has suffered drug related deaths. The most stringent measures are in place yet drugs are still being consumed inside the venue.”

Mr Matthew Phipps, legal representative representing Rainbow, denied the 15-year-old boy had been at the venue saying “We have the most stringent measures in place including CCTV, sniffer dogs and searches in the queue and random searches inside and we propose to increase this even further by installing CCTV inside the toilets as this has been seen as a problem. However, some customers do use the most extreme measures to smuggle drugs including putting pills in car keys and also intimate places in their body. We simply can’t guarantee that no drugs will ever get through but our measures will be the tightest it can be.”

Councillor Alex Buchanan, chairman of the committee, said they had no other option but to revoke the order, saying “We have a duty to protect public safety. There has been two deaths in less than two years. The most stringent measures in the city have been introduced at the club but only last month there was another death through drugs. The committee has no option but to revoke Rainbow club’s license.”

The Rainbow Venues promotion company run a number of Digbeth venues including The Rainbow Warehouse, Spotlight, Blackbox and Crane,  It is unclear which venue(s) it will impact directly. The Rainbow Venues have yet to comment.

Rainbow Venues has 21 days to appeal the decision in court.