The High Court has refused permission for G-A-Y’s judicial review proceedings, challenging the Government’s 10pm curfew.

In a statement G-A-Y said:

Starting off with some bad news ref G-A-Y’s judicial review proceedings challenging the Government’s 10pm Curfew. The court have refused us permission for the case to go ahead. This decision was made on the papers submitted by G-A-Y and the Government. The good news is that there is still the chance for our lawyers to argue before a judge why the case should be allowed to go ahead and for a judge to make a different decision. This can happen so we have decided not to give up. 

Since we made our last announcement, the tier system has been introduced with more protective measures introduced and venues across the country, including G-A-Y Manchester, have been forced to close. Knowing that even when these venues can reopen they will continue to make losses because of the curfew is heartbreaking, especially when we can see no good reason for it to protect customers and the public. All it is doing is putting hospitality out of business, and encouraging people to continue their evening after 10pm at private residences without all of the Covid-secure measures venues like ours have in place.

So today we have instructed our lawyers to renew the application for the court’s permission to go ahead, but this time we will be arguing for permission at an oral hearing.  We still haven’t seen evidence that comes close to justifying the curfew.  If the Government had something convincing we would have hoped to have seen it by now. It doesn’t.

To be honest with everyone, so you know the next stages, if we lose the oral ‘renewal’ hearing then it’s game over as far as our Court action is concerned. However, if we win it then we get to go to a full court hearing and we get to fight for hospitality and removal of the nonsensical 10pm curfew.

This will not be easy, but we are continuing because G-A-Y believes the 10pm curfew is crippling hospitality and is not helping stop the transmission of the virus. So round 1 may be lost but the battle is not over. As soon as we have a date for the oral hearing, we will update you.