A DIRECTOR of Oscar's Wine Bar, in York, has blasted the law and the council after he was fined £3,000 for breaking alcohol legislation.

Last December, bar employee Euan Christopher Bell, 24, sold alcohol to two teenagers, aged 15 and 16, in the Swinegate drinking spot.

The youngsters were part of a joint trading standards and police undercover campaign against underage drink sales.

Both Bell and his boss, Andrew Dunn got convictions at York Magistrates Court under the Licensing Act. "It was a blatant miscarriage of justice," Dunn told The Press outside court. "It is a sad day for York and a sad day for licensing."

He said the magistrates' judgment against him showed that his premises licence, that allows Oscar's to sell alcohol, "was not worth the paper it was written on".

"Under-age drinking is as rife now as it was before they (trading standards) started this campaign," he said, alleging that children could still buy alcohol at pubs, though not his. Dunn, 44, of The Garden Village, York, had denied a charge of failing to exercise due diligence to ensure that his staff did not serve children, but magistrates convicted him after a day-long trial. He was fined £1,500 and ordered to pay £1,500 court costs.

He is considering appealing.

He said he had large files relating to the nine-month-old case, which has included several court appearances and a previous trial that had to be aborted over legal issues. Much of the legal arguments centred around who was responsible for ensuring under-age sales did not occur.

Bell, of St John's Street, York, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to selling alcohol to a child and was fined £100 with £50 costs.

He is still employed at Oscar's and gave evidence for Dunn. He said the sale had been his mistake and that he had been trained in how to avoid underage sales. But the time of the sale had been very busy and he had not looked at the customers properly.

Magistrates' reasons for convicting Dunn included that he had not produced documentary proof that his staff were trained or that they used a refusals book to note when they refused to serve children alcohol.

They said he was responsible for staff staying within the law.

A City of York Council spokesman said: "Clamping down on the sale of alcohol to people under the age limit is something that we take very seriously. The case has now been dealt with and the court shared the view that staff at Oscars were given every reason to decline the sale."

Prosecuting licensees is not way to tackle problem'

LICENSEES in York's fashionable Quarter district have voiced their concerns over the prosecution of Oscars for selling alcohol to children.

Oscars' owner Andrew Dunn and Magdalena Chavez, owner of nearby restaurant El Piano, said prosecuting landlords was not the way to tackle the problem and it caused bad will.

They felt the council's trading standards department should adopt "intelligent initiatives" like identifying which pubs attracted high numbers of under-age drinkers, rather than their negative policy of trapping bars in sting operations.

Mr Dunn said: "I'm not only a licensee, I'm also a parent. I have a 16-year-old son. I have for the last nine months been talking to his friends and I've found out where they drink.

"Trading standards may think their policy is working - it's failing abysmally.

"We need intelligent initiatives, I don't think trading standards understands the licensing retail trade. They've taken a 15-year-old into a busy licensing premises in Christmas week and I think it's wrong."

Mr Dunn said the council had also made errors in its prosecution, insisting that he was the designated premises supervisor of Oscars when he was not.

Mr Dunn said he had also invested in training staff in under-age drinking and other licensing matters by putting them through a licensing certificate - the highest qualification available - that was not taken into account.