Last orders at the ‘necessary’ saloon
What about the activities authorised by your licence? Have you ever wanted to hold discos or karaoke without having to apply for a temporary event notice each time? If you are thinking of applying to amend your licence, now is the time to do it — because from 25 April 2012 the word ‘necessary’ will disappear from the licensing lexicon and be replaced by ‘appropriate.’
If your application is received by the licensing and other authorities before 25 April 2012, then even if it is decided after that date the authorities will still have to apply the old ‘necessary’ test, asking themselves: “Is it really necessary to have that condition?” Or, to put it more plainly, would a less costly or onerous alternative serve the same purpose?
Let’s say you have a condition requiring an expensive noise limiter, but you want to remove this condition and replace it with one that states that you will carry out regular noise patrols.
If you can prove to the authorities that standing outside your neighbours’ houses and listening for any intrusive noise is just as effective as an expensive noise limiter, you have a decent chance of having the noise- limiter condition removed, because it isn’t necessary.
But if you apply after 25 April the authorities have only to ask whether a condition is ‘appropriate’ — a much lower threshold. Indeed, they may well think that having both a noise limiter and regular noise patrols is appropriate. And if you ask the council’s licensing officer what the word ‘appropriate’ means he or she will probably tell you it means ‘suitable’. Look in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and you’ll also find ‘inherent’, ‘characteristic’, ‘proper’ and ‘fitting’. The fact is, no-one’s too sure.
If you add that after 25 April all ‘reasonable recommendations’ by the police are likely to be accepted unless there is clear evidence to the contrary, and that people living hundreds of miles away can object to your application, there is every reason to make that application you had always planned to make but had never quite got around to — and to make it now.
Having attended many licensing hearings around the country, I also anticipate a partial mellowing by the authorities in the weeks to come, a sort of dewy-eyed nostalgia about the good ol’ ‘necessary’ days when they had to apply a stricter test, and one that had some legal precedence and meaning. Licensing authorities, police and environmental health officers know the goalposts are about to be shifted in their favour — they may just let you score a couple of tap-ins before they do.
