Legal Q&A: Renewing your licence and when it's under threat

Must I renew my licence?

Q. My personal licence is due for renewal on 5 April 2015. I have seen reports in the press that personal licences will no longer need to be renewed, but is this still the case?​

A. The Home Office announced some time ago, after a consultation on the future of personal licences, that they would not need to be renewed, albeit the system would continue.

We have heard little, if anything, since then, and the Deregulation Bill that was due to abolish the requirement to renew a personal licence is yet to come into force.

We are still awaiting further guidance from the Home Office as to what is going to happen, but until the Deregulation Bill has come into force, or we have further guidance from the Home Office as to how renewals should proceed, you have to be prepared to renew your personal licence.

In order for your renewal application to be valid, it will have to arrive with the licensing authority no earlier than three months and no later than one month before it is due to expire.

Licence is under threat

Q. My premises licence is being reviewed for the third time in two years and the police this time are going for revocation. Obviously, I am looking at ways to save the licence and I was wondering whether by transferring it to another operator this may help?​

A. Your proposal very much depends upon the nature of the transfer.

I do not know the history or detail of your premises, but if the transfer is a real one in the sense that a genuinely new operator is acquiring the premises from you at market value and is proposing to run it in a different way (or indeed proposing to do the same things better than you) then this of course may help — the authorities should be interested in any realistic alternative to revocation of a premises licence.

However, if you are planning to transfer the licence to a friend or business associate, perhaps in the hope that the police will not make the connection between you and the transferee, this is unlikely to materially affect the outcome of the review. In summary, a technical transfer will probably not help, but a genuine disposal of the premises to a responsible operator may be just what is called for.