JD Wetherspoon has admitted liability in respect of one of its pubs, The Tivoli in Cambridge, where three members of the travelling community were refused entry by door staff and a member of the pub’s management team, following a traveller’s funeral in the vicinity, on the grounds that they were travellers.
Wetherspoon chairman Tim Martin said: “We apologise to the three claimants for the embarrassment and distress caused to them and have offered to pay damages to each of them as well as legal costs.
“There was no intention by the company to discriminate against these individuals.
“This is the second legal case involving Wetherspoon and the travelling community in the past month in which discrimination has been established. The first case, concerning The Coronet in north London, related to an incident in 2011 and The Tivoli incident occurred this February.
“These are the only two cases brought against the company by the travelling community for discrimination since Wetherspoon was founded in 1979.
“We reiterate that there was no malice intended by the company in eithercase and Wetherspoon did not have a discriminatory motive.
“Our pubs serve more than two million customers each week and unfortunately errors by our staff do occur on occasion, notwithstanding our commitment to equal treatment of all customers and staff and the training we provide in this area.
“We will be redoubling our efforts to ensure that we, as a company, and our staff, learn from these mistakes.”