Legal advice: Trade wants answers on Licensing Act

Overwhelming response from licensees despite attack.

by Richard Williams of thePublican.com's legal team of experts from London solicitors Joelson Wilson.​

I read with interest the comment made by Patrick Crowley at the British Institute of Innkeeping conference on the Licensing Act, that licensees are showing a "distinct lack of interest" in the new law. (Click herefor the full article on thePublican.com). This has not been my experience - but licensees will have to be encouraged by local authorities to make their views known.

Along with my colleagues at Joelson Wilson, I have been running presentations and workshops over the last few weeks about the new act. We have been talking to company management teams, site managers, barstaff, door supervisors etc. The response has been pretty overwhelming, with interesting and taxing questions being asked, some of which we are still unable to answer due to a lack of secondary legislation.

Here are some examples of the sort of issues individuals have questioned us about:

• What will a personal licence look like?
• Will there be a standard form for an operating schedule or will operators have to draft these documents?
• What will the fees be for a personal licence and premises licence and what will any on-going fees be?
• What scale does a premises licence plan have to be drawn to and what are the colouring requirements?
• Can there be more than one designated premises supervisor?
• How are licensing authorities able to check out foreign offence records?

I am afraid that these questions remain unanswered and despite requests being made to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport for clarification, much of the practical information required is still to be determined.

The most recent draft guidance provides some assistance with interpretation of the legislation and by the time you read this article the final version of the guidance might have finally been published.

However, it will not deal with practical points and we await publication of the secondary legislation before further information can be provided. I will update you as soon as answers become available.

The industry employees that I have spoken to find it amazing that the government managed to push through the act on the basis of a framework document promising "overall savings to the industry of £1.97bn over the next 10 years", even though the fees have still not been published.

There will be some very angry individuals in the pub industry if the financial benefits of the deregulation do not appear in practice.

Management teams I have spoken to recently indicated that the act has already cost companies a substantial amount of money in training and they are expecting to incur substantial costs on conversion.

If you add together the cost of converting licences to premises and personal licences, the proposed fees payable on conversion and the requirement to continue to renew public entertainment licences (and pay a full renewal fee) until the act is fully implemented, it will take a long time for these costs to be recovered.

I dare say that by 2005 there may be many people within the industry looking back fondly on the old Licensing Act.

Pictured: Patrick Crowley criticised licensees for a 'distinct lack of interest'​