Advice: Avoiding a licence review

To be precise, the words of Warren Buffett, the billionaire American investor, spring to my mind: “When the tide goes out, you get to see who’s been swimming naked.”

In my experience, most reviews brought by the police are the end point of a protracted period of “soft” intervention (usually about a year) where concerns about the running of the premises have been dealt with on an informal basis.

Some relatively minor incident or routine visit may trigger concerns at licensing HQ and what follows is a series of meetings with the licence holder and DPS, actions plans drawn up, possibly minor variations to add conditions relating to extra door staff or CCTV to the licence, all backed-up by a degree of advice and support from experienced officers.

The police rarely want to take a premises to review — they consider it a failure on their part, they are unsure of the outcome and there is a large amount of preparation work they need to do. Added to that, there is the concept of “partnership working” and best practice, which suggests strongly the police should not jump in at the first breach of condition or assault on the premises with a prosecution or a review.
 
Often the problems are resolved informally and the premises comes off the watch list. However, I am not talking about those premises but the ones that appear never to treat the police seriously.

Some operators will accept in a police meeting they are breaching a licence condition but then do nothing about it, or agree to prepare an action plan and only do so three weeks later (after prompting by the local licensing officer), only then not to institute the plan as agreed. Even at this stage, and though police at licensing HQ may be pulling their hair out that they cannot work with the operator, no formal action occurs.

What then often happens is a really nasty incident — a heavily intoxicated and vulnerable woman leaving the premises who is subsequently sexually assaulted, a 16 year old attending A&E after getting drunk in the premises, a glassing, or other incident of similar seriousness.

This is the “trigger event” which brings the premises straight to the attention of the chief inspector or superintendent ultimately in charge of licensing who immediately calls for the file, only to see that in addition to this “isolated” incident there is a history of the licence holder at best dragging his or her heels and at worst blatantly ignoring the warnings. A decision is immediately made to review the licence and all previous notes of meetings, failed action plans, minor incidents and breaches of conditions are included in that review, together with the most recent and serious incident.

This is where Mr Buffett’s words come into my head. In my experience of licensing committees, local councillors are quite prepared to accept there will be an occasional incident of a serious nature at a licensed premises, particularly ones that trade later into the night.

Even if the police feel duty-bound to bring a review due to the seriousness of an incident, if the licensee has always co-operated with the police and tried to promote the licensing objectives then councillors tend to take a sensible and proportionate view. However, what absolutely infuriates licensing sub-committees and is an extremely difficult issue to address (however many hastily drafted conditions are offered by the licensee’s lawyer on the day) is that big bundle of notes of meetings

and action plans stretching back months, if not years, earlier when the signs were there, but the licensee did little or nothing to address them. Any one of these may be relatively minor but the combined effect is to portray an image of a licensee who simply does not take the licensing objectives — and the authorities charged with promoting them — seriously.

This is when the tide goes out for the operator. If at a review the licensing committee believe that even if they impose conditions those conditions are not going to be complied with, they will be looking at the much more serious options of removal of the designated premises supervisor, suspension of the licence (officially to give the operator time to get his act together, but often as much to punish and send a message) or revocation.

And this will not be because of the major incident that triggered the review, but the pattern of behaviour (or lack thereof) that led up to it.

This outcome is so avoidable it always saddens me, particularly when the vast majority of licensees do their utmost to uphold the law and promote best practice. The message must surely be that despite the vast array of pressures facing licensees, it is vital to deal with minor licensing issues quickly. Your actions may constitute your best defence in the event of a more serious incident prompting formal police action. In other words, keep your trunks on.