On Wednesday 27th October, women across the country will be participating in the Girls Night In campaign by boycotting bars and nightclubs.
This is in response to the recent increase in reports of women being spiked and injected during nights out.
We have spoken at length with our management teams about how we ourselves can take action.
Management teams who wish to do so will be closing their pubs at 10pm. We can confirm that managers are facilitating shift swapping for members of their teams who wish to participate in the Girls Night In boycott.
We have however found that many of our female identifying team members do not wish to participate in this way. Though they understand and support the concept, many feel that they should not have to change their own behaviour in response to recent attacks.
We support each woman in the Castle Rock family in responding to this epidemic in a way that feels right to them. We ask that their choices are respected by all. Women’s voices must be amplified.
Our ethos as a company, built 44 years ago, was to create friendly, welcoming pubs. That remains our core value. The safety and wellbeing of our teams and customers has always been, and will always be, our number one priority.
Our management teams feel confident that the training programmes at Castle Rock are robust. This is particularly true in areas such as drug awareness, first aid, and health and safety. We are introducing sexual harassment training imminently and providing our teams with guidance on the current situation. We have also taken part in training this afternoon with Nottinghamshire Police. We have long-standing relationships with our security teams and will liaise with them to double our efforts in ensuring women feel safe and comfortable on nights out, during this increased time of fear and always.
We will also be continuing to use our platform and relationships with organisations and MPs to help safeguard our communities.
Nottingham and Loughborough are wonderful cities, and we are so proud to be a part of them. We will always do all we can to protect their people and help them thrive.
Team CRB x
If you would like to get in touch with us directly about how we can improve your feelings of safety in our pubs, please email execassist@castlerockbrewery.co.uk.
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