After six hours of discussion and deliberations, 2,000 pages of documents and passionate speeches, three councillors made the decision to close Fabric – Islington’s famous nightclub – with the loss of 250 jobs.

The review into Fabric’s licence was sparked following the deaths of two teenagers who took drugs inside the Farringdon venue over the summer. Both managed to sneak MDMA (ecstasy) past security and were able to buy more inside the club. There have been four other drug-related deaths connected to Fabric since 2011.

Delivering the licensing committee’s decision at 1am on Wednesday morning, chairman Flora Williamson said a “culture of drug use exists at the club which the existing management and security appears incapable of controlling”.

A review of the licence was carried out in 2014 after two deaths. Fabric overturned some of the conditions imposed on them at that time, including use of ID scanners.

Club bosses this week offered to beef up search procedures and pay for police sniffer dogs, but Cllr Williamson said they would not address the “serious concerns” they had with the management. Cllr Williamson and councillors Gary Poole and Asima Shaikh listened to five hours of representations from the Metropolitan Police, the council’s public health team, Fabric’s managers and a drug expert.

It was the Met who first asked for a review of the club’s licence in August, prompting the temporary closure of the Charterhouse Street nightspot, which first opened in 1999.

Over the summer, officers conducted overt and undercover operations at the club and said it provided “a safe haven for the supply and consumption of illegal drugs”.

They painted a picture of lax security where MDMA was easy to obtain, saying the councillors should “seriously consider revocation” of the licence as they felt more deaths would occur in future.

But Fabric co-founder Cameron Leslie, in a speech that drew riotous applause from the public gallery, hit back at the police operation, calling it an “entirely premeditated exercise”.

He added: “The notion that we provide a safe haven for drugs is frankly insulting to the considerable efforts we have put in over the years. My co-founder Keith Reilly stood up to a significant organised crime organisation who wanted to run drugs into this club just after we opened. He had to move his family out of their home and wear a bulletproof vest for nearly a month.”

The club has the highest annual security bill of any club in the UK, the highest ratio of security guards to patrons, two on-site medics at all times and a state-of-the-art medical room.

Mr Leslie, a former hospitality and leisure consultant at Deloitte, cited a judge who in December highlighted Fabric as “a beacon of best practice”.

Mr Leslie said: “In as late as June this year Islington police sent the management of another London venue who had suffered a fatality to us to see how we did it, citing our procedures as the best in the business.”

He said the police had chosen to turn on Fabric with an operation supposedly dubbed Operation Lenor after the fabric softener.

“This team started from the end-point and gathered evidence accordingly,” he added.

Cllr Poole asked the most searching questions of Fabric’s representatives and their proposals for more stringent checks. “There is nothing novel or new in response to these deaths,” he said.

While questioning general manager Luke Laws, the prevalence of drugs within prisons was raised.

Cllr Poole, a governor at HMP Pentonville, hit back, claiming that the Caledonian Road prison had a better safety record than Fabric. There have been five suicides in the prison in under two years and Pentonville’s own monitoring board’s 2016 report said trying to stop drugs getting into the prison was like “holding a hand up against the incoming tide”.

He later clarified to the Tribune that Pentonville had a better record on drug deaths.

The committee heard from members of the public who supported Fabric. DJ and classical composer Kate Simko said the closure would have an “undeniable impact on this city”. Having performed in clubs all over the world, she said Fabric’s search policy was “extremely strict”.

The club cited hundreds of emails it receives from people who complain about the invasive searches.

Professor of crimin­ology at Durham University, Fiona Mesham, who also advises the Home Office and has worked in drug policy for 25 years, said Fabric was “one of the best-run clubs I have ever seen”.

She said clubs faced a huge challenge as ecstasy has become up to 10 times stronger in the past decade and deaths have risen nationally. She also countered police claims that Fabric had a disproportionate number of deaths compared to similar clubs in London.

The only public representation opposing Fabric was from Raphael Andrews, ward council­lor for Clerkenwell. He “begged” the committee to shut the club down.

“I don’t want to be here in another three of four years with another death,” he said.

Teenage drug victims named
THE two young people who died after taking drugs at Fabric over the summer were this week named as Ryan Browne and Jack Crossley.

Mr Browne, 18, fell ill at the club on June 26 while on a night out with friends. The teenager, from St Albans, Hertfordshire, was described as “an amazing lad with a great future”.

Mr Crossley, also 18, from Worcester Park, Surrey, collapsed outside the club on August 6.

The 18-year-old was treated at the club at 2am and died after being airlifted to hospital.

He had played cricket for Worcester Park ­Athletic Club, and was described by the club’s manager, Carl Costello, as a “kind and lovely boy”.

• Keywords
  DEATH, DRUG ABUSE, NIGHTCLUBS
• Geographical keyword
  CHARTERHOUSE STREET
• Persons keyword
  Clerkenwell Fabric Nightclub