by MA Reporter
Westminster Council is preparing for up to 800 appeals against refusals to grant variations in licensing hours, according to sources involved in the licensing process. Critics claim Westmin-ster has imposed a blanket ban on new applications to serve alcohol past midnight in the West End.
The council, which looks after the greatest concentration of licensed premises in the UK, already has more than 300 pubs, bars and restaurants with existing licences that allow them to open past midnight.
However, so far it admits to passing just two applications to open past midnight from bars currently without late licences in the so-called 'stress areas around Covent Garden and Soho.
The council is said to have asked Horseferry Road Magis-trates Court in Westminster, if it could cope with up to 800 appeal hearings. Experts have claimed it would take more than six months to clear that number of cases, at a cost of millions of pounds.
Westminster Council has insisted applications for opening times outside the 'core hours of 10am to midnight 'will be considered on their merits.
But Eddie Passey, retail director of Interpub, said: 'We made a very reasonable request, and it was turned down, so now we've put in a request for what we really want, on the grounds that it will be turned down as well and we can appeal on that.
'Our dealings with them were completely at odds with the 13 or 14 other councils where we applied to vary hours.
Craig Baylis, a solicitor at the legal firm Berwin Leighton Paisner, said he had made 25 applications to Westminster Council on behalf of clients to vary closing times past midnight, and all but one, which was outside the 'stress areas, had been turned down. All his clients were making appeals against the refusals and he knows of three or four other firms of solicitors who also intend appealing against their refusals.
Jeremy Allen, partner in the legal firm Poppleston Allen, said that 'generally around the country most local authorities were not causing unnecessary difficulties for bar operators during the licensing process, but problems were arising with one or two, including Leeds and Bromley.