Judges are to consider case against sex shop

CAMPAIGNERS fighting to get a Truro sex shop closed down are claiming a significant victory in their battle.

The Christian Institute (CI) and city councillor Armorel Carlyon have been told their application regarding Mrs Palm Limited will now go to judicial review.

It opens the prospect of a courtroom hearing as judges decide whether Cornwall Council acted unlawfully in granting the shop a licence.

Mrs Palm provoked the ire of local campaigners and the CI because of its location – next to school uniform shop Trevails on Little Castle Street.

However, despite more than 100 objections – many of which were struck out because they focused on legally inadmissible moral grounds – the local authority's licensing committee granted the business permission to open.

Cornwall Council has said it will not contest the case, a move which could later leave it open to legal action by the sex shop's owners, who began trading in November after obtaining a ten-year lease on the property.

Braxton Reynolds, joint owner of the shop, said the case was unlikely to go before the courts until October at the earliest, by which time the shop's licence would already have been subject to its first annual review.

Mr Reynolds said he did not envisage any circumstances under which the renewal would be refused. "All a judicial review can tell the granting authority to do is go back and re-determine the original licence, and that will probably be taking place after the first annual renewal," he said. "I addressed all the issues of objection in my own submission. The only arguments that were dismissed were essentially on moral grounds, and they were not legally admissible."

Simon Calvert, of the CI, said: "This confirms there is a case to answer here.

"Part of it is that its location is next to a school uniform shop and that the content of some objections, which was relevant to the case, was treated as irrelevant.

"If we win it will have implications for other sex shops around the country, allowing them to be challenged for being in inappropriate places."

In November Northampton Council blocked the opening of a fish-and-chip shop because the location was near two schools and, it argued, its presence undermined the schools' healthy eating message.