Time to stop making up licensing rules

For many years there has been a simple view that the Government makes laws and the police enforce them. There should be - so the books tell us - a strict division between the law-makers and those who take us to task.

But it came as no surprise to me to see two recent stories about the police going their own way about licensing, both on the issue of polycarbonate glasses and a request for signatures on a "form of intent" direct from Bolton licensees.

The comments of Marston's Stephen Oliver are very much to the point. He says: "If the police have a genuine concern, there's a proper legal process to go through."

Quite. Although I am very much a supporter of the idea of a dialogue between the trade and the local administrators and enforcers, I have seen too many examples of the police laying down the law in an unacceptable way to be entirely happy about their proactive stance.

I remember one area of Essex, some years ago, where every incoming licensee taking a transfer was "carpeted" by the local police inspector who effectively gave him a caution on how to run his pub, as if he had already stepped out of line.

His actions gave the impression that all licensees were rogues who had to be reined in at the earliest opportunity.

Thankfully, those days are past. But in some areas a distinct impression still lingers that licensing is seen as something to be controlled and run by the local police, in line with their own views on how things should be done.

The whole object of having the new-style licences was to allow each licence to be tailored, by means of conditions, to its particular circumstances. It was not so that standard conditions could be put on all licences, or that conditions should be sought that had been dreamed up by a department for their own purposes - as is definitely happening with environmental health departments in several parts of the country.

The fact that licensees are accepting these impositions, which is itself being used as a justification for them, is no evidence that they are right. I am aware that often licensees will opt for the quiet life, and if a policeman sticks a form in front of you, the first reaction is likely to be: "I had better sign this and shut up".

Practitioners did warn those in the trade not to give hostages to fortune when they completed their transition applications by writing down all the ways in which they hoped to fulfil the licensing objectives: these were turned into conditions, which were then enforceable.

Remember that the police are using section 19 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 to issue closure notices on premises that are not complying exactly with the conditions on their licences.

All this is not scare-mongering - there is a very real threat of the trade being tied in knots by these additional restrictions on the way pubs are run. The fact that signatures are required from everyone in a district shows that there is no intention of targeting particular premises: a general point is simply being made that licensees should toe the line or face the consequences.

I am very aware that the licensed trade has made huge strides in terms of education and training and that the vast majority try their best to comply with the law as they see it. But if the law is being stretched to new limits every week - not by Government but by the administrators - then we have to call time.