Locals upset as bingo hall closes

All the staff at Riva Bingo will lose their jobs when the club closes

Residents in the Knowle area of Bristol are devastated about the closure of a popular bingo hall in the Broadwalk Shopping Centre.

Twenty-six staff at Riva Bingo will lose their jobs at the end of this week and the doors are already shut.

Manager Roger Peters told BBC Bristol: "We're all very, very sad about it. The club's been such a popular club for many years.

"To see it being taken apart is just awful. It's just a shell today."

Mr Peters thinks that there are many reasons why the club has had to close, with the smoking ban being the centre of the problems.

"In 2007 the smoking ban was the biggest single problem for the bingo industry - around 67%, 68%, of bingo players were smokers at that time. It just really, really rocked the industry totally.

"Then there was the first change in the gaming laws at that time which took at certain machines, which stopped income streams.

"Bingo had VAT on it, which bookies and casinos didn't, so the industry's been fighting against that."

Mr Peters believes that there is still a future for bingo halls but as the number of users drop, it is going to be a tough challenge for the industry.

"It is a far cry from when the original national game came in in the 1980s and there were 1250 licensed bingo clubs - now there are around 400, I think."