Get set for rise in licence fees

For many years the fee for an annual (then three-yearly) justices' licence was pegged at a modest level, because the licensed trade was not being asked to pay for "servicing" the licensing system.

Local government has a different agenda, based on the precedent achieved in public entertainment licensing - that it could charge what it felt was reasonable to cover the administration of licensing. In Westminster, as a result, the fees ran into thousands of pounds to pay for a large department of licensing administrators.

Now that the departmental committee under Sir Les Elton is presumably getting closer to reaching decisions on fees levels, the campaigning has started afresh. Local government has made no secret of the fact it wants more money out of the system. Central

government won't provide it (it gave nothing at all for start-up costs, although it promised some originally) so the trade has to cough up.

Although there is already some loading for entertainment venues (vertical-drinking establishments, to give them their new name), councils feel that they are not getting enough return to cover not only issuing licences (which will of course diminish dramatically now) but also policing and enforcing the laws. They want the licensing trade to pay proportionately for this and reckon that late-night venues should stump up the most.

Set against this is the unfairness of a simple country pub paying an annual fee for

virtually nothing, in terms of the system. Such a pub will continue to subsidise the requirement for the council to take action in other places, while continuing to abide by the

law and having no engagement with the

council.

It irks to have to "pay" for a periodic inspection purely for the purpose of seeing if the pub is complying with the law. After all, what are the police there for?

One has some sympathy with that view, and also the view of many smaller operators that they pay a fee based on the rateable value not of their tiny section but the whole building. If the rateable value fees go up, they will be paying even more.

But Sir Les has a tough job with these diametrically opposed views. He may be forced into a corner on the question of fee levels, because the government will not want to be seen to deprive councils of cash, with yet another licensing function, that of gaming, just around the corner. I should not be surprised to see the fees go up when he reports later this year.