Examination of Witnesses (Questions 23-39)
COUNCILLOR AUDREY
LEWIS, MR
ANDREW FISHER
AND TONY
KELLY
31 OCTOBER 2005
Q23 Chair: Welcome. May I make the point
that we have your written evidence, so we do not need to go over
points again which you have made in the written evidence. Members
have that and will have read it. May I also just ask each of you
to introduce yourself starting with you, Mr Kelly?
Mr Kelly: My name is Tony Kelly.
I am employed by Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council as Project
Manager for what has been termed the Licensing Act 2003 Project.
Mr Fisher: I am Andrew Fisher.
I am the Group Manager with day-to-day responsibility for the
licensing unit and therefore for the implementation of the Licensing
Act in Bolton.
Councillor Lewis: I am Audrey
Lewis. I am the executive Cabinet Member with responsibility for
community protection and licensing in Westminster.
COUNCILLOR AUDREY
LEWIS, MR
ANDREW FISHER
AND TONY
KELLY
Q24 Mr Olner: We have heard, both
from evidence that we have obtained and certainly through newspapers
that local authorities are struggling to get their licence applications
through their licensing sub-committees in the appropriate time.
Why is this? Surely the demand was predictable. Was it the Government's
fault or the local authority's fault?
Mr Fisher: I think it is true
to say that the demand was predictable: the difficulty has been
created because lots of the licences came in towards the end of
the process. That was probably quite predictable. That in itself
has resulted in a large number of the applications, which then
needed to go to a licensing sub-committee hearing, all needing
to be arranged within a fairly short period of time. I think it
is that that has caused the difficulty.
Q25 Mr Olner: I know from my own
local authority that local councillors have worked tremendously
hard and put in a lot of hours trying to get the licences right.
Mr Fisher: Indeed.
Q26 Mr Olner: Do you think there
should be scope to have those licence committees enlarged somewhat?
They are restricted in size. Should they not be enlarged, so perhaps
the load could be spread a bit more over other local council members?
Councillor Lewis: We certainly
lobbied very hard. If you remember, the original Bill said only
10 members. We protested strongly and got it up to 15. I think
in a sense the horse has already bolted, because we needed the
ability to have more members during the predictably very challenging
time of transition; it is less important now because hopefully
things will not come in at the same rate again. If I could just
refer to your earlier question, far from being predictable, we
had extensive talks with the licensed trade in Westminster and
the national association and were led to believe that it would
be front-loaded rather than back-loaded. So to get nothing at
the beginning and 40 per cent in the last week put our resources
under an enormous challenge.
Q27 Chair: Do you have an understanding
of why that happened?
Councillor Lewis: I think it was
a combination: very late regulations coming out, guidance coming
out late, regulations coming out at the last minute, a much more
complex form than anybody anticipated, the fact that a lot of
people did not realise they were going to have to get new plans
drawn, lots and lots of people turned out not to have a current
personal licence and our magistrates were inundated with people
doing transfers because they suddenly needed to get a personal
licence to become a designated manager; lots and lots of problems
there. Partly also I think, the fact that if you did it in February,
you would have to pay again next February and this was a disincentive.
Q28 Mr Olner: You talked about lobbying.
Which department of government did you lobby? Was it the ODPM
or the DCMS?
Councillor Lewis: A combination
of both of those, plus through our Member of Parliament. We made
representation when the Bill was in the House of Lords on these
points. When I say both DCMS and ODPM, we wrote to the ODPM on
the point about numbers of councillors and said "Look we're
an excellent council, can we please have the flexibility to have
more councillors, because of the pressure ours will be under?'.
They referred the letter to the DCMS who acknowledged it and a
year later we have not had a reply.
Q29 Mr Olner: So you think the ODPM
should have kept their eye on the ball and that is where they
should have been increased.
Councillor Lewis: It might have
helped, certainly in that regard.
Q30 Mr Lancaster: The councillor
has outlined why she feels that some 40 per cent of her licences
were in the last week. Can Mr Kelly and Mr Fisher perhaps outline
why they think their licences were so late and also whether it
would have made any difference if the application forms or the
guidance had been issued that bit earlier?
Mr Fisher: Human nature is part
of the answer to that question. I think there was a tendency to
ignore it in the hope that the dates might move or simply because
people did not get round to filling the forms in until there was
an urgency about it.
Mr Kelly: It is just a cash flow
thing for small business in a lot of cases. They would rather
spend £1,000 or £1,800 in August than incur it sooner
than they need to in February.
Councillor Lewis: May I make another
point? The forms were difficult. We did a lot of publicity beforehand
and tried to be helpful. I was asked by my local Japanese restaurant
whether I would help them with their application and I told them
precisely what I thought should go in every section; I did not
actually fill out the form. They got it back with five mistakes
which I had not been able to predict. They were very prescriptive
and there was no slippage. We should like to have been allowed
to say "Oh that's not going to affect the outcome" and
proceed.
Q31 Sir Paul Beresford: What was
the reaction of your community halls and your church halls? They
are mostly run by volunteers. The ones I have come across in my
constituency have shrieked with horror at the complexity of form,
the fact that they are volunteers and so on and so on. Have you
had the same reaction?
Mr Fisher: Generally that sector
has found the process difficult to deal with. An incident has
occurred recently in Bolton where a group has taken the temporary
event notice route and wishes to perform a play, but they want
the play to run for five or six nights during the course of a
week and of course that cannot be covered by one temporary event
notice. They will either have to have a break in the middle of
that and apply for two temporary events notices or go for a full
premises licence. So I think it is an area where it has caused
some problems.
Q32 Sir Paul Beresford: Do you think
the temporary event notice limit should be hugely increased? Do
you think it is sensible to set a de minimis level, below
which a small hall does not have to apply at all?
Mr Fisher: That is a possibility,
or perhaps to differentiate between theatre groups, for want of
a better term, and those who are providing different types of
regulated entertainment which might be more disruptive to local
residents, or where it involves some other type of activity.
Mr Kelly: If a terminal hour were
attached to temporary event notices, which would be 10 o'clock
or 11 o'clock in the evening, and a different view taken upon
those, then that might simplify it for the church groups and amateur
groups.
Q33 Alison Seabeck: You obviously
had a flood of applications at the end. Do you think anything
could have been done to incentivise businesses to respond more
quickly, perhaps in the same way as the Inland Revenue advise
people to get their self-assessment forms in, some sort of cash
incentive to do that earlier?
Councillor Lewis: I should like
to see an early payment incentive. I should also like there to
be some incentive for them to pay at all, because there is absolutely
nothing in the regulations which makes them have to pay and we
would have to pursue any debts through the civil courts and that
would be an additional burden.
Q34 Dr Pugh: May I quote some evidence
we have had in front of us here, which is from an applicant and
says "I had all my documents with me, everything was in order,
the only thing I did not do was get the back of my passport photo
signed by someone known to me who would state it was a correct
likeness". The application was rejected. I should have thought
it was fairly easy to tell whether something was or was not a
photograph of a person.
Councillor Lewis: That signature
on the back is a complete fiasco anyway. There is absolutely nowhere
in the form where they are asked to say who that person is. They
could have obtained any signature and it would have done, there
is no room on the form for a date of birth to be put in, anybody
could apply because the police have no way of checking; they have
been totally reliant on the magistrates court all these years
and checking with the date of birth evidence in front of them.
All these things have gone in the new organisation.
Q35 Dr Pugh: It is technically an
error and the form gets rejected for any kind of error. There
are minor errors and there are major errors but there does not
seem to be any uniformity between local authorities and whether
they interpret it as a minor error and they take the application,
or whether they send it back through the process all over again.
Did you seek further clarification on what is an allowable mistake
and what is not an allowable mistake from anybody?
Councillor Lewis: We certainly
did. On plans, we tried very hard to get much more flexibility
about what kind of plan was acceptable, because that was putting
people to a great deal of unnecessary expense apart from anything
else, and we would have liked to have seen a lot more flexibility.
We did not get any guidance on a lot of these things. We have
asked for it on many occasions, we have written letters pointing
out the problems we were encountering and not had a response.
Q36 Dr Pugh: So what is happening?
Is it a case that people in different authorities are making up
their own minds?
Councillor Lewis: We eventually
got 93.2 per cent of our applications regarded as valid and that
is because the more we went on, the more we tried to find good
excuses. We would go back to people, we would say "We'll
hang on to them; all you have do is get a cheque in. Come in and
see us, sign it". We would not send stuff back.
Q37 Dr Pugh: What percentage of people
ended up putting in their applications more than once, do you
think? Just a guess.
Councillor Lewis: Probably not
a lot putting them in de novo, because we tried to help
them along the process. We had seminars during the process, we
went down to the Chinese community and other communities and sat
there and helped them fill in their forms. We were bending over
backwards to try to get as many as possible in correctly.
Q38 Dr Pugh: But there is no guarantee
that what you did is what other local authorities did. Other local
authorities might have applied the rules far more rigorously and
less sensitively.
Councillor Lewis: It is possible.
Mr Fisher: On that point, we would
guestimate that we probably rejected round about five per cent
of the applications, largely for failure to advertise properly.
We had our enforcement team inspect notices which were displayed
on premises and it was those inspections which generated the largest
number of rejected applications in Bolton. Just to pick up on
the point that was raised before, I like to think that we approached
it in a sensible manner and that that sort of very minor fault
in an application would not result automatically in rejection.
But we have to remember that we have employed additional members
of staff, we have given them very clear guidance on what constitutes
an acceptable application and what points should cause the application
to be rejected. It has not always been possible to take that entirely
practical and pragmatic approach with respect to each application.
Mr Kelly: Generally, things could
be resolved within a very short timescale. For example, if we
received an application with a copy of the justices' licence which
was not appropriate, or was out of date, or what have you, we
would contact those people and if they could turn it round in
a reasonable period, then we still accepted that application.
Q39 Martin Horwood: Clearly there
has been a huge problem with the timing of the applications and
the volume of applications and collectively we seem to be laying
quite a lot of the blame at the door of DCMS in terms of the level
of bureaucracy and the timing of the regulations and the timing
of guidance, but one of the interesting things in the Federation
of Small Businesses' evidence to us was that they have detected
quite huge variations between local authorities, who are obviously
in the same position with respect to DCMS. For instance, they
say generally local authorities with good guidance and clearly
accessible information on their websites have had a better response
rate than those which did not offer good guidance and in some
cases no guidance at all. They quote variations between 77 per
cent of all possible applications and as low as 30 per cent of
all possible applications coming in within one week of 6 August
deadline. Do you think you did it better or worse than other authorities
of which you are aware? I think I can predict the answer. If so,
what kind of publicity and marketing of the process worked well?
Councillor Lewis: By definition,
people who have made representations to this Committee have probably
been very thoroughly into the whole matter. Licensing is very
important in the City of Westminster and we took it very seriously,
we spent a lot of time and trouble to try to get our local policy
right for instance and to get the consultation on the local policy
correctly done and then to try to interpret that for people. We
sent out a copy of our policy to every licensed premise for comment,
not just the trade bodies and so on. Some local authorities did
not think licensing was as important, and probably did not all
the way along the process. It probably did not have as high a
profile or as much will; indeed I met quite large London local
authorities who did not budget to spend a single extra penny on
this process. We decided we had to do it at a level which was
appropriate and therefore set aside really substantial sums in
order to do that. I think it all follows along from there.
Mr Kelly: Where we were able to
engage with local groups, and I am citing say the registered clubs
in Bolton and the off-licences, we met with them at group meeting
et cetera and we explained to them what we perceived the benefits
of applying early to be and in a lot of cases they did. With respect,
it was a great number of the larger pub groups, the brewery groups
who caused the August rush and it was rumoured that was a tactic
undertaken by these groups to try and to flood the system at the
eleventh hour. I am not saying whether it was or whether it was
not; that was the rumour. It certainly was something which did
happen and it was the larger pub companies and pub groups which
did put in massive numbers of applications right at the end.
Councillor Lewis: They also put
in absolutely blanket applications which took no account whatsoever
of whether it was a residential area or a non-residential area;
they came in identically at the last minute.
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