Has the paper pile paid off?
The last 12 months haven't been easy for the councils at the front line of licensing but there is a sense that the hard work has paid off. In an exclusive poll of 127 licensing officers - answering on behalf of their local authority - 69% say the traditional post-pub and post-club flash points have disappeared to some extent, thanks to the new regime.
One of the big aims of the Act, to reduce the bottleneck of people gathering in town centres after a big night out, seems to have been achieved in many areas.
However, 21% of those polled say there is still an issue with too many drinkers spilling out on to the street at the same time.
Another sign that reform has been a success in some regions is that over a third of licensing officers (34%) say disorder in their area has decreased since last November.
Thirty seven per cent say the level of disorder has stayed the same and only 16% say there has been an increase (13% didn't answer).
Research consultant Leslie Henry says: "The concerns many people had about the new licensing regime, don't seem to be borne out by this survey.
"It has certainly got no worse and in many cases it has got better. This seems to be one thing our Government has got right."
Henry says there is a link between thinking disorder has decreased and a reduction in flash points.
"A high number of respondents (33% of the total) say disorder has decreased and flash points reduced. For whatever reason, 10 respondents (8% of the total) say that flash points have reduced but disorder has
increased," he adds.
Only 2% of licensing officers reported issuing between one and seven fixed-penalty notices to bar staff for serving drunks. Meanwhile, 66% said they didn't issue any fixed penalty notices and 31% didn't answer.
But when it came to issuing fixed penalty notices to staff for serving under-18s, 21% of licensing officers say they have issued
between one and 22 fines.
"It would be interesting to find out why these particular local authorities issued penalty notices. Is it because they work in busy city centres or because of test purchasing operations," adds Henry.
At the same time 19% of local authorities say they have used their new closure order powers to close venues between one and four times, 66% say they haven't used the powers at all and 17% declined to answer.
Cases of the number of attempts to revoke a licence are even higher. Almost a quarter of those surveyed have sought to revoke a
licence between one and five times, with 2% making the request between six and 15 times.
Test purchasing operations
Since local authorities were given more power and effectively allowed to police licensing themselves, more of them have taken on the responsibility of carrying out test purchasing operations outside of the national AMEC campaigns, with 25% saying they carry out test purchases once every two months.
A further 25% say they carry out these
operations at least once a year, 9% say they send underage potential drinkers into pubs at least once a month and 1% do it every fortnight, with a further 1% doing it every week. Including the 19% that didn't know/didn't answer, this means that test purchases are carried out, on average, 4.5 times a year.
Jeffrey Leib, on behalf of the Institute of Licensing, says that while the results are positive, many councils are still having problems. "We welcome the perceived improvements that this straw poll shows and are cautiously optimistic for the future, although it may be too soon to draw definitive conclusions about the future," Leib says.
"The Act has been a challenge to enforcement officers in several ways. While the trade has generally stepped up to improve standards, there is still quite a way to go with some off-licences and a smaller number of on-licences, particularly around underage sales. It has also become clear that many former holders of justices' licences, who applied through the transition period with grandfather rights, are not wholly familiar with their new responsibilities under the Licensing Act."
