Q&A
Not valid in Scotland
Q. I am thinking of taking over a pub just over the border in Scotland. Will my existing personal licence be valid for that, or will I have to obtain a new one? I have a BII certificate.
A. This is an interesting point. Although the relevant Scottish qualification will be acceptable in England and Wales, for some reason the NCPLH will not be valid in Scotland. This means you will have to start from scratch if you want to obtain a personal licence to run a Scottish pub.
The system for obtaining and continuing with a personal licence north of the border is different in several respects from its English counterpart. The Scots point to the differences in the two Licensing Acts to justify not accepting the English qualification. But the Licensing Act 2003, which applies to England and Wales only, does have a concession for both Scottish and Northern Irish qualifications.
There appears to be a requirement for licensing authorities to accept "a qualification obtained in Scotland or Northern Ireland ... which is equivalent to (an English) qualification ..."
There seems no doubt that the new Scottish NCPLH is such an equivalent and would be valid for any Scottish licensee seeking to run an English pub. But the same would not apply the other way round.
Under the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005, there is a power for ministers to prescribe qualifications awarded outside Scotland as being valid for Scottish personal licences; as I understand it, the NCPLH is not being prescribed for this purpose.
There is also a requirement for Scottish licensees to undertake a refresher training course every five years of their licence tenure, which is not the case in England.
Morris men exemption
Q. Can you remind me — is a licensee exempt from entertainment licensing if he allows morris men to perform at his pub during the summer? I seem to remember this, but someone has told me that it is music and dancing on the premises and must be licensed.
A. You are right, and you may well have read this in the Morning Advertiser when the new Act was passed.
Thanks to the House of Lords, morris dancing was made specifically exempt from the requirements to hold a licence, because it is not to be considered "regulated entertainment".
The schedule covering this goes even further by suggesting that other forms of traditional dance would also be exempt, as would providing facilities for enabling persons to take part. Whether this would mean that American line dancing would be covered by the exemption is not clear — the statutory Guidance does not deal with this point and it is, therefore, up to local licensing authorities to take a view.
In any case, it may be that the actual entertainment takes place outside the licensed premises and would, therefore, not be the responsibility of individual licensees.
It would be a churlish local council that tried to introduce red tape into this traditional English pastime anyway!
Residents' friends
Q. Under the 1964 Act, a resident's right to be served at any time extended to his friends. What if they have made friends in the bar that evening? Can they continue to use the bar even when other people have been required to leave the premises?
A. Clearly it will depend on the individual facts as to whether they are real friends or whether some form of payment was made to the resident. A licensee cannot turn his bar customers into friends to get round the law, but there will be circumstances in which it would be quite appropriate for someone staying the night to continue to be supplied with alcohol after the time stated on the premises licence, relying on the implied condition brought over from the previous legislation.
Although some licences were silent on this point, I advised those who had residential accommodation to insert a mention of it during transition, just to make it entirely clear that the right continued to exist.
