By Alan Richardson

A PERTH NIGHTCLUB owner has slammed a delay in re-opening a city centre road following an accident on Saturday night, claiming it has cost him almost £8000.

Dave Ryan, owner of Bliss and Envy in Canal Street, was furious a lengthy wait for a road traffic investigator meant his club could not re-open after a teenager was involved in a collision with a car.

Police said yesterday the time taken was necessary because of the potentially serious nature of the accident.

The accident happened as youngsters left the club shortly after 10pm following a 16th birthday party.

Police spotted it as they viewed live CCTV images and feared the youngster had been seriously hurt.

After breaking up the crowd, the boy was taken to Perth Royal Infirmary but was released on Sunday morning.

Officers closed Canal Street but had to wait until after midnight for an accident investigator, by which time Mr Ryan’s custom was gone.

He said, “I have no issue with them closing Canal Street because it did look very serious for a while. But it took them in excess of three hours to get the crash site investigator and I think that’s an unreasonable amount of time.

“It was 1am before he got there and he stayed 40 minutes and then the road re-opened. Our nightclub couldn’t open because it’s on that road, even though it was on the other side from the crash site.

“We co-operated by giving police our crash barriers for crowd control but there was nothing the other way.

“They wouldn’t give us any indication of when the road would re-open so we still had to pay staff wages for them to be sitting around all night just in case.

“If the road had been re-opened by 12.30 the pubs would have been emptying and we still could have got 60 to 70% of our business but that didn’t happen because they took so long.

“I would guess we lost about £7000 in takings and £500 to £600 in wages.

“Thankfully the incident wasn’t as serious as we thought it was going to be but I think it’s unacceptable to take so long to get an officer a few miles from Dundee to Perth.”

Inspector Ken Brown, head of Tayside Police western division’s road policing unit, said, “The problem is that we need these specialists to examine the scene and we are calling them out from their homes late at night.

“There wasn’t any undue delay and everything was done as quickly as was possible.

“We understand the frustration but we were dealing with what looked like a very serious and life-changing accident and that has to be properly investigated before the area could be disturbed.

“We do apologise for the delay but I would stress it was necessary because of the seriousness of the collision.”

Police appealed for witnesses in the wake of the accident, which involved a silver Vauxhall Corsa car. Two people were arrested in the aftermath.