LAP-DANCERS now have a venue in the heart of the historic city of Canterbury, close to the Cathedral, in which to strut their stuff.

Scribes bar, in King Street, has been granted licence to allow girls to perform in an upstairs private members’ lounge.

The dancers will each pay £30 an evening to the pub’s owners for the privilege. They will then take home all performing profits, at a tariff expected to be set at between £10 and £20 a dance.

This application had provoked the largest number of objections of any of the city’s licensing requests to date. Almost 70 residents had written letters and emails to the licensing panel registering their disapproval, and many turned up to the meeting.

Bridget Russell, who lives in King Street, said she was concerned that by setting up a lap-dancing club at Scribe’s the owners were actually "trying to establish a foothold for prostitution throughout the city". She added this could lead to an sharp increase in sex crimes.

Susan Meikle spoke out as the bursar for King’s School, many of whose boarders reside in the vicinity of the pub.

She said: "Young teenage children should not have to walk past premises on their way to and from classes from which clientele, probably intoxicated with alcohol, exit and may be sexually stimulated from the type of entertainment offered by a lap-dancing club."

But barrister Darren Weir, for Scribes’ owners Wesley Wilson and Matthew Rolfe, said: "There is no link whatsoever, in any crime statistics, that connects sex shops, lap-dancing, or any of the sex trade with sexual offences.

"The venue proposed is designed for professional people who want professional entertainment - no more than that."

The pub’s owners will invite up to 100 people to register their membership for exclusive use of the upstairs private lounge.

They will each pay a £100 annual fee and the club will operate a swipe card system of entry, with CCTV and door staff operating at all times. The single room can accommodate no more than 30 people at any one time.

But the downstairs of Scribes will continue to operate in the manner of an ordinary pub, and it was this aspect of the business to which most of the residents raised objections.

Niall and Hilary McKernan live opposite the pub. They played a tape recording at the meeting that had been made from inside their room with the windows shut but which had still captured the rowdiness emanating from the pub.

Mrs McKernan said: "In our sitting room 40 feet away from Scribes we can hear not just every word of every song but the general hubbub of people talking. And when they leave it is absolutely horrendous.

"Because of this we no longer invite friends round in the evenings. It has seriously curtailed our social life. We’re embarrassed to have our friends round and hear what’s going on."

Many others agreed, saying drunken yob behaviour regularly spilled out from the pub into the narrow residential street.

But Mr Weir said much of the problem behaviour dated back to when the pub was in the hands of former owners and the present ownership had gone to great lengths to encourage a more professional and respectable clientele.

The pub and members’ lounge was refused its application to stay open until 1.30am, and must instead close by 11.30pm and 11pm on Sundays. Lap-dancing was granted from Mondays to Saturdays, between the hours of 7pm and 11pm only.