Qualified hosts offered to trade by relief agency

A pool of fully-qualified relief licensees is being made available to hosts who risk seeing their pubs closed by police if they take a holiday.

Bar-Code Agency, based in Barnsley, South Yorkshire, has trained 20 personal licence holders to help solve a legal row involving the trade and police in the town. It follows an insistence by local licensing officers that a designated premises supervisor or personal licence holder must be present in pubs at all times during trading.

Police closed down a pub in the town earlier this year when they discovered the licensees were on holiday in Spain. Despite criticism by trade leaders and licensing lawyers, police are sticking to their guns, claiming correct interpretation of the new Licensing Act.

Ex-licensee Sandra Wood and former Barnsley licensing officer Steve Thomas have joined forces at the new agency, providing qualified staff to take over pubs on request.

The agency has recruited a pool of qualified personnel to help out licensees when barstaff let them down at the last minute.

"We have a register of 30, including 20 personal licence holders, to help out licensees in an emergency.

"The recent incident highlighted a need for availability of PLH-qualified staff to ensure pubs remain open when licensees are away," said Wood.

"We are providing trained barstaff to cover for 11th- hour emergencies - there is a definite gap in the market," she added.

The agency offers customers a range of courses, including a BII-approved professional bar qualification.

Bar-Code is waiting for confirmation of a 40% government-funded grant towards the training costs for both PLH and barstaff clients.