Nightclub chain goes under with 3,000 jobs set to be lost

lub chain at centre of student death goes into administration

Photography: BruceTurner (Flickr)

Britain’s biggest nightclub chain, owning 75 night clubs, including one where student Nabila Nanfuka, 22 died this month, has gone into administration.

Luminar, which is said to pull in around 11 million customers a year and owns branches such as Liquid (which has a chain in Newcastle), Oceana and Lava said that it was unable to meet some of its repayments, which where due on October 27.

Around 3,000 jobs are now at risk if the business can not improve its financial situation in the coming weeks. Even though most clubs will stay open until they can be sold, office jobs could be lost in the near future.

The company recorded losses of £198m in the year to the end of February as sales dropped by just under 20% to £137m.

This news comes in the same week that a 21-year-old student from Northampton, who was involved in the same stampede that killed Nanfuka, was downgraded from critical condition. However, a 19-year-old still remains in a critical state in Northampton General Hospital.

Last week an inquest into the death of Ms. Nanfuka heard that the student had died of traumatic crush asphyxia as staff in the ‘over-capacity’ venue ‘lost control’ as the night was coming to an end.

The Milton Keynes-based company tried to sell the business recently, but only received offers for small parts of the business, an insufficient method of generating their returns to share-holders.

Some of the reasons suggested behind the downfall of the company are high levels of youth unemployment and poor economic conditions. Nights such as ‘Fuzzy Logic’ did show some ‘encouraging’ signs of stability during Freshers’ Week. However, performance has been consistently under par and the company has been unable to meet its financial demands.