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Fetish club ‘to be home for old folk’
9:58am Monday 20th November 2006
A fetish club will be closed down and demolished if a planning application to build an old people's home on the site is approved.
News of Club Liberty's demise comes almost two weeks after it was raided by police.
Local residents had paid for a private investigator to visit the Scaynes Hill site and compiled a dossier which included a string of allegations about sexual conduct at the club.
Brian Sheridan, who has run the club near Haywards Heath with his wife Caroline since November 2005, said the site was sold to a national nursing home operator in the summer but the sale was subject to planning permission.
He is also acting as a managing agent for the site freeholders, ABL Ltd.
Mr Sheridan said if planning approval was given, the club would have three months to leave the premises.
He denied the police activity had any bearing on the decision to close the club and said any suggestion it had was "complete rubbish".
"The decision to sell was taken in August. The club was visited by police as a consequence of false statements made by local residents making allegations."
Mr Sheridan said he did not think the club would re-open at another site.
"It has probably reached the end of its time. It was an experiment that, for Club Liberty, didn't come off."
Residents' group Friends of Scaynes Hill compiled the dossier and handed it to police in July.
They made a series of allegations against Mr Sheridan, including selling alcohol without a licence and illegally dumping waste.
Mr Sheridan has denied all the allegations.
Martin Whittome, chairman of the residents' group, said: "I am amazed it has stayed open this long. It is a dismal little pub.
"The objection has not been on a moral basis. What we object to is the flouting of the authority of the council, police and so on.
"I don't think there's a single person here who won't be truly delighted."
Mr Sheridan said the plans had been submitted to Mid Sussex District Council last Thursday.
Earlier this year police and magistrates closed the club's Festival of Bliss owing to concerns about licensing and allegations of "disorder".
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