Councils too slow on licences

I see that another trade paper has at last got round to finding out about Allerdale Council (Coulson, 5 July). Better late than never, I suppose. But their strident tabloid claim that the pubs were "forced to trade illegally" because of the missing licences is complete nonsense.

The fact that local councils have been slow and slipshod does not in itself affect the legal position. As it is the local authority that would take action for failure to display a summary of the licence, it can hardly haul off licensees for a review, or put them before the magistrates, if it is the council itself that has not produced the licence in the first place.

It is the same, legally, with pubs in Westminster. However, that has not stopped enforcement officers calling on many of them and pointing out that they need to display their licence summary. When told that the licence is still with the council - either because it has not been issued, or because it has once again been sent back for the correction of an error - they say: "That is not my department".

It is time that my good friends LACORS - the local authority watchdog - finally got down to some research to find out why so many councils seem still to be struggling with what was claimed to be a completed project. They have plenty of evidence now, which was what they asked for all those months ago. It just seems to me that they never do anything about it.

Let us hear from them on why they have not taken up the issues with the councils concerned, or why the Government's much-vaunted cry of "local accountability for licensing" seems to be so much hot air. As far as poor performance in licensing is concerned, it seems that the real situation is "any excuse will do".

Although the Licensing Act and the regulations are full of deadlines and notice periods, the only people who are penalised for not meeting them are licensees. There is no penalty for lateness by local authorities, and in some cases they even manipulate the dates of receipt to give themselves a few days extra, while holding the licensed trade strictly to their interpretation of notice periods.

It is scandalous that after so much time since the implementation of the Act we still have these problems. But I notice that the authorities concerned are this time keeping their heads down. Perhaps they are too embarrassed to speak.