The Groucho Club will be allowed to reopen after an emotional council meeting at which its licence was reinstated, providing that the 39-year-old institution follows strict police-proposed rules on members’ guests and the monitoring of toilets.
The London private members’ club’s licence had been temporarily suspended after allegations that a woman was raped inside the venue on 13 November. A 34-year-old man was arrested in Hertfordshire on suspicion of rape and has been bailed.
On Wednesday, a Westminster city council licensing subcommittee lifted the suspension with immediate effect, provided the club complies with new licence conditions that will be decided on in the coming days.
Groucho staff cried as the committee announced its ruling. A representative of the club, which counts many A-list celebrities among its members, said a statement about the club’s future was expected on Wednesday evening.
During the hearing, the Metropolitan police made 13 recommendations for the new licence conditions, including properly supervising toilet areas, staff welfare training and a tightening up of “previously lax procedures” relating to members and their guests. Discussions referencing the police investigation were held in private.
The club, in Dean Street, Soho, was founded in 1985 and has been frequented by successive generations of artists, writers and musicians. It took its name from Groucho Marx, who famously said he did not want to belong to any club that would have him as a member.
It welcomed female members, something that was anathema to London’s male members’ clubs, while fostering a creative membership that included members of Blur and artists such as Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Francis Bacon.
After the police investigation began, the Groucho Club’s chief executive, Elli Jafari, wrote to members apologising for the temporary closure and saying it was taking the licence review “very seriously”.
The temporary closure of the club, which costs up to £1,500 a year to join and has 5,000 members, was announced just as the lucrative festive season began.
Its owners, the Artfarm, run by the gallerists Manuela and Iwan Wirth, are keen to attract a younger clientele, and the club announced in March it was planning to open a new outpost at Bretton Hall in Wakefield, which will be converted into a club and hotel with about 60 rooms.
