A Haringey Council licensing meeting had to be abandoned after a lawyer for the pub said he was considering reporting a Metropolitan Police officer for a criminal offence under the Licensing Act.
Councillors deliberating over the fate of the North Eight pub – formerly the Hornsey Tavern, in Hornsey High Street – had been given a list of recent police call-outs to justify a licensing review.
It said officers had been called to violent offences 13 times since April 2025.
But specialist licensing solicitor David Dadds said four of those were duplicates and most of the rest turned out to be false reports.
Saying councillors had been “misled”, he told the meeting: “It is either that the officer has been reckless, negligent or intended to give a false statement today. It is serious.”
Two residents and a councillor had urged Haringey to remove the pub’s licence, saying it was a magnet for antisocial behaviour, including late night noise and fights.
But Mr Dadds said elements of the community had taken against the landlord because he refused to racially discriminate against travellers and they did not like travellers coming to their area.
“My client is concerned that indirectly, there is discrimination because the premises is used by the travelling community and the residents directly above do not want a traveller pub directly underneath them,” he alleged.
“There is discrimination. There is actually water being thrown at the travellers underneath to get a reaction and film it. Eggs are being thrown. The conduct is unacceptable.”
After receiving the list of police call-outs, said Mr Dadds, he requested additional records – but the Met waited until the day before the meeting to send him 200 pages of records.
It did not send the extra pages to the council.
When Mr Dadds compared them to the list that had been given to councillors, he said, he found major discrepancies.
One incident was described to councillors as a sexual offence, but the additional records revealed somebody had simply been grabbed by the arm.
The case was closed with no further police action in May, said Mr Dadds, yet described to councillors in July as a sex crime.
“There is no reason – no reason at all – that that should have appeared again in any papers before you in that way,” he said. “It’s misleading and false.”
He then began listing “violence” call-outs where officers showed up and logged that no crime had in fact occurred.
“It goes on and on,” he said. “It is not acceptable that you have been given a list like this and I have gone through most of those and it’s ‘no crime’. It’s serious.
“Someone has come to this committee, a police officer who should be professional, and has misled you.”
Asking for an adjournment, he said: “It directly undermines the licensing process, which I say constitutes an offence, actually, under the Licensing Act.
“It is an offence to knowingly or recklessly make a false statement in relation to an application… Potentially, we are going to report this matter as a crime and it needs to be seriously investigated.”
Mr Dadds said the extra 200 pages also showed police repeatedly making inappropriate reference to travellers’ heritage in their reports.
James Rankin, a lawyer for the Met Police, responded: “It, I regret, is an old advocates’ technique. What you do is find one or two CADs (police computer records) that give you information that assists your case and then attempt to drive a coach and horses through the police case.”
He said the list handed to councillors had “faithfully” recorded what complainants had phoned in – but accepted it might not reflect the truth of the incidents or outcomes.
But, he insisted, “There is absolutely no need for an adjournment.”
Councillors disagreed, calling the meeting to a halt and saying they would reconvene in August.
The Met Police was approached for comment.
