A TOWN centre takeaway has been ordered to cease late night trading after complaints from Wiltshire Police.

A licensing panel made up of three councillors met on Thursday to consider the case of Super Pizza in Fleet Street.

Police licensing officers had raised concerns that the restaurant had been failing to provide adequate security and CCTV in accordance with its licence.

The panel also heard that during an inspection in July, the manager on site at the time was found to be working in the country illegally. He was arrested, and is now awaiting deportation.

After hearing from the Swindon Borough Council licensing manager, an officer from Wiltshire Police’s licensing team and the owner of Super Pizza, Suliman Aruby, the councillors decided they were left with no choice but to revoke the premises licence.

Mr Aruby now has 21 days to appeal the decision. If he chooses not to do so, or if his appeal is unsuccessful, he will have to close his doors at 10pm each day, a move likely to come as a huge blow to a takeaway in the heart of the late night economy area.

The panel heard that an initial visit to Super Pizza earlier this year revealed that despite it being a condition of the licence, no door supervisor was present.

The CCTV was also found to be inadequate in that it only stored footage for 14 days and not the required 28.

Despite a formal warning, subsequent visits revealed that nothing had changed.

The revelation that the manager, Waseem Gul, was working illegally, only compounded problems.

Asked to account for his alleged breaches, Mr Aruby told the panel that while Gul had been employed previously, he was not actually working at the time of the police inspection.

Instead he claimed that he was merely visiting and had asked to make himself a pizza behind the counter.

When challenged on why he had been wearing the same blue gloves as other staff, Mr Aruby suggested that it was out of an abundance of caution for food hygiene.

The panel was not convinced by his explanation. They also found that there was no evidence that he had carried out the required right to work checks on Gul during the previous period in which it was acknowledged he had been working at Super Pizza.

PC Diffin, licensing officer for Wiltshire Police, informed the panel that Gul had in fact been wanted for removal from the UK by the immigration services for 12 months, meaning any checks carried out would have revealed his ineligibility to work.