Cultural changes take more than a generation to achieve. So it is wishful thinking for anyone to assume that the so-called liberalisation of permitted hours will be achieved in 18 months. Yet that is the line taken by the Government. The pub trade is "free" to apply for whatever hours it wishes under the new system even 24 hours a day, seven days a week. What could be fairer than that? Well, quite a lot, actually. What turns that promise into fairy gold is the intervention of a local council and local people with fears. The prospect of liberalisation vanishes into thin air if one listens to even a few of the warnings emanating from town halls all over the place. Let me take one existing example in the West Country there is a local authority which has a condition on its public entertainment licences prohibitingsuch entertainment on Sundays, Christmas Day and Good Friday without the prior consent of the council. This has resulted in a ruling by the council licensing officer that those premises with a public entertainment licence on Christ-mas Eve (which is an ordinary Wednesday) are prohibited from operating after midnight, because it runs into Christmas Day. The same holds true, he says, on Maundy Thursday, which for the uninitiated is the day before Good Friday. He might consider a variation, but it will cost an extra £50 and may, in certain circumstances, not be granted. I am not going to go through all the arguments why he might be wrong in this column. But it is that culture which has to undergo a sea change if the new system is to operate effectively. And it won't. As I have commented before, it is all very well producing a blank sheet of paper and telling everyone that they can fill in the hours they want on their operating schedule. It is quite another, given the experiences we have all had with applications for public entertainment licences, to assuage the fears of local residents that your proposals will result in rowdy mayhem outside their bedroom windows all night. They do not, after all, have to have proof of that. All they need to do, when your advertisement appears in the local press, is to contact the licensing officer with their misgivings. That then allows the council to take the view that indeed you will cause undue disturbance, which is a public nuisance contrary to the licensing objectives, and therefore your hours of operation should be curtailed. The phrase "public nuisance" is not defined in the new Licensing Act, but at this stage it does not need to be, because the objections will, in the main, be hypothetical. Clearly, where there has been previous disturbance and the hours of particular premises have been curtailed as a result, there will be some form of precedent. But a pub which currently opens only until 11pm does not have any track record on late-night disturbance. What will happen to his application to open until 2am at weekends? There is undoubtedly a clash of cultures here, and it is understandable that residents may be fearful of late-night noise. All the more reason, in my view, why we should have started by abolishing permitted hours (including "scheduled" permitted hours) entirely, as they have done on the Isle of Man, and rely on common sense and strong enforcement to ensure that licensed premises did not cause problems. The vast majority of the licensed trade want to remain at peace with their neighbours, not start off a new system with confrontation. Let us hope that accommodation can be reached.
