Prepare well to avoid missing Formula fun

It is clear that nothing about the new law is certain at this stage. But the greatest uncertaintystill hangs over the question of special events and extra trading hours.

It has to be remembered that holiday extensions, for example, will be a thing of the past. There will be no provision for applications to be made by Licensed Victuallers Associations in respect of a set of holiday periods for members, and no magistrates to grant them.

There will therefore be only two courses of action available to licensees in future:

1. Ensure that your variation form B, which you will complete along with your application for conversion, contains sufficient trading hours to cover all the required extensions throughout the year.

2. Make use of the 12 temporary event notices that will be available for your premises (each of which you will have to pay for separately).

Clearly, it would be better if the hours agreed by your local council for your premises covered every possible situation ­ which is why some licensees are still, quite rightly, contemplating an application for 24/7. Not because they want to open round the clock (although presumably the Daily Mail is still on the lookout for the ultimate binge landlord) but because with that variation in your pocket, you have unlimited flexibility.

What concerns me, however, is how councils (and residents) will react to applications that show apparently far longer hours of opening, without some form of explanation from the applicant as to what is really intended. Here is where the problem lies. The form does not give very much scope for creative writing. True, it provides a box for what are called "non-standard timings" but then it asks the applicant to "list" these. The box is very small; two or three lines and you are out of room. This may in itself inhibit pub applicants from attempting much in the way of a comprehensive listing, especially those who are completing the form without professional help.

Say, for example, that you want to open early in the morning for a special sporting event taking place on the other side of the world, which is being televised. It seems to me that either you have to be non-specific in this box, and say you will open from 6am on certain days in the year on the occasion of such sporting events, or you will risk missing the opportunity to make sales of alcohol because your non-standard timings do not cover that particular day.

It is clear that no landlord can be expected to predict with certainty the actual timings of such events in 2006, 2007 and 2008. It must be hoped that local councils recognise this and do not insist that each and every non-standard timing must be"listed" to be acceptable on the application. It may be that they want to ensure that the operating schedule that they produce has no grey areas, and so must not in itself provide for a flexible approach in its wording. As far as I am aware, this has not been tested so far, but it surely willbe in the next few weeks and months.

Wherever possible, what you want to avoid is getting the initial application wrong and then having to apply early in 2006 for yet another expensive variation to add some other hours that you had not thought of. This is why you must not rush into your application, as some rather thoughtless legal advisers are suggesting, but must really think through the variations that you are making on the initial application form.