Student bar 'loses' £34,000 of drinks

The union lost £160 worth of drink a day since August

A students' union bar has lost £34,000 worth of alcohol - with claims that staff have been handing out "free" drinks.

The University of Warwick students' union is investigating the disappearance of drinks from one of its bars - with an average of £160 worth of alcohol going missing every day since last August.

The missing drinks have mostly been vodka-based - with accusations from the students' union that "staff fraud was one of the causes of this problem".

The students' union president, Martin Biggs, said the only fraud so far identified had been students working behind the bar giving out drinks without charging.

He accepted that this would not account for the full size of the losses - but said there were no indications of any more organised thefts from the bar.

'Massive shame'

Disciplinary hearings are to be held for an undisclosed number of staff.

And in response to "procedural inefficiencies", the students' union says two managers have "mutually agreed to terminate contracts of employment". There is no suggestion that they were directly involved in the losses.

But Mr Biggs said that the loss of so much money was a "massive shame".

"We're talking about the same money that the union gives to societies every year - such as paying for students to take part in the fringe at the Edinburgh Festival."

After suspicions about stock losses, the students' union launched an investigation and ran daily checks on the bar - and concluded "beyond reasonable doubt" that there was fraud.

Finance officer, Neil Drennan, said the union was "shocked and dismayed at the extent of this fraud. The people who have done this have stolen money directly from services for students".

The students' union says it has now put in place stricter mechanisms for stocktaking and will implement a 50-point plan to improve procedures.

A university spokesman said that the theft was a matter for the students' union - but that university authorities were satisfied that correct procedures for tackling the problem had been put in place.