Q&A
Bring your own
Q. We have a city-centre pub in a back street near the main shopping area. Recently, we have had reports from our staff of people sitting either in the pub or in the garden and opening bottles which they have clearly bought while shopping. On one occasion they had a whole bottle of wine between four of them. Can I tell them only drinks from my pub can be drunk there?
A. Yes, you can, because it is your right to set the rules in your own pub. Of course, there is no technical legal prohibition on bringing alcohol which has been purchased elsewhere for off-consumption into a pub. It is taking the alcohol from the pub, or consuming it there, which presents the problems.
Clearly, you are not going to take kindly to "foreign" stock on your premises, unless you know that the customer is going to his home, is not consuming the products he purchased earlier, and has merely called in for a drink with you on his way.
You are certainly entitled to prevent persons drinking their purchases on your premises, and you are entitled to insist that all drinks for on-consumption must be purchased from you as the licensee.
There is also the problem of drunkenness, where persons buy beer from you and proceed to drink spirits at the same time from their own bottle. Where this happens, you are clearly within your rights to ask such persons to leave immediately.
Taking single days off
Q. My new bar manager has advised me that we have to make special arrangements
for staff with disabled children. I never knew about this. We never ask during interviews.
Is this now the law?
A. It is true that the parents of disabled children now have enhanced rights with regard to parental leave from work. You may ask about such matters at an interview, but refusing a competent person a job on these grounds, apart from being extremely unfair, could be taken as discrimination.
The right to take parental
leave lasts in such cases up until the child's 18th birthday. The normal extent is until the child's fifth birthday.
Also, parents of disabled children are entitled to take
leave a day at a time, whereas other parents must make arrangements for leave in blocks of a week or more. There are other specific rules which may be amended from time to time, so it is best to get the relevant details from the Government's employment website or your local offices.
Failure to comply with the regulations could be taken to an employment tribunal.
Name above door
Q. Does the name and address of the designated premises supervisor (DPS) have to be above the main door of the pub, like the licensee name board which we had for years?
A. No, the situation is entirely different now. A pub cannot operate without a designated premises supervisor, and the name of that person and their personal licence number must be supplied to the licensing authority. Any change in the DPS must also be immediately notified.
The licence will then be physically altered to put the new name in. The summary of the licence, which has to be posted up in the pub, will also carry the name (but not the residential address) of the DPS.
That is all that needs to be done. Instead of a formal name board, the piece of paper from the licensing authority will be sufficient, as long as it contains the name of the current DPS.
However, there are many pubs which went through transition under the same ownership which still retain the traditional strip above the main door and there is no reason to remove it simply because the law has changed.
It should not remain if there are different people running
the premises.
