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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1093-ii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT committee
MS BRIGID SIMMONDS OBE, MR KEVIN SMYTH and MR BARRY SLASBERG MR MALCOLM CLAY and MR MARTIN BURTON MR JAMES LOWMAN and MR JEREMY BEADLES Evidence heard in Public Questions 115 - 176
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Members present Mr John Whittingdale, Chairman Mr Nigel Evans Paul Farrelly Alan Keen Mr Adrian Sanders ________________ Memorandum submitted by Central Council of Physical Recreation
Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Ms Brigid Simmonds OBE, Chairman, Central Council of Physical Recreation, Mr Kevin Smyth, Secretary, Committee of Registered Club Associations and Mr Barry Slasberg of Kingsley Park Working Men's Club, gave evidence. Q115 Chairman: Good morning and welcome to this, which is the second session of the Committee's inquiry into the Licensing Act 2003. We have three parts in this morning's session and for our first part I would like to welcome Brigid Simmonds, who is the Chairman of the Central Council of Physical Recreation; Kevin Smyth, the Secretary of the Committee of Registered Club Associations. Barry Slasberg, which club do you represent? Mr Slasberg: Kingsley Park Working Men's
Club, Chairman: Just before we start I think there are a number of declarations. I would like to put on the record that I am Vice President of the Maldon Cricket Club, which does gain some of its income from the sale of alcohol. Mr Evans: I am President of the Clitheroe Wolves. Paul Farrelly: I am an Honorary Vice President of the Finchley Rugby Club and Secretary of the Commons and Lords rugby team, the latter of which profits out of absolutely nothing. Mr Evans: I am also Vice Chairman of the All Party Beer Group. Q116 Chairman: Perhaps we could start with the general principles underlying the Act. It was intended that the Act would deliver a streamlined procedure, clearer objectives and greater democracy. Do you consider that it has achieved those objectives in terms of your own experience? Ms Simmonds: It has probably achieved those objectives overall. I think it would be difficult to argue objectively that having more local democracy and more involvement with the community was not a good thing; but if you had a licence which only cost £16 and could last for up to ten years and you are now paying the sort of fees that we are paying it would be difficult to think that that was a streamlined system which was better. If you look at the licensing objectives of crime and disorder, public safety, public nuisance and protecting children from harm, sports clubs do not contribute to any of those. In fact you could almost argue the opposite, that sports clubs provide an antidote to crime and disorder. Mr Smyth: I virtually agree entirely with Brigid. It was something that we never really wanted at working men's clubs and sports clubs. You cannot argue with the basic idea of why it was wanted but the actual benefit as far as clubs go has been minute and the costs have been horrendous. Mr Slasberg: I would just add to that that as far as my club is concerned all those objectives have been the objectives of our club since time immemorial; we were formed over 100 years ago and we have a very comprehensive disciplinary system which ensures that our members are responsible both within the premises and outside the premises - always have done. This adds nothing but we fully concur with all the aims of the Act, which we are quite proud to have been practising since before it was conceived. Chairman: Perhaps we can go now to the impact on your own specific clubs, and if Nigel could begin. Q117 Mr Evans: Is the general view that you are opposed to this new licensing regime because we are where we are and that is basically the fact. It clearly has a cost to it, which is much higher than the old cost. So, taking the view that we are where we are, do you think it is right that the full costs ought to be met by those who have the licences? Ms Simmonds: I think the full costs should be met by the licences but I think it was the LGA who said in your evidence session a week or so ago that what is happening is that the smaller premises, the community premises are effectively subsidising the larger clubs. If you look at the ongoing annual fee, you are talking here about paying, if you are in category B, £295 a year. If you are not on the risk register you are not renewing your licence, the licence goes on in perpetuity, so what are you paying all that money for on an annual basis as a club where you are not causing nuisance and you are not creating crime and disorder? We just do not have those sorts of problems. So you are paying this ongoing annual fee and more fees if you want to make a variation to your licence for really almost nothing in return, and one has to question why that is the case, which is why the CCPR has argued quite comprehensively that the clubs should pay at a much minor level, effectively as they do as CASCs, which is based on your 80% rate relief which you get if you are a community amateur sports club. Q118 Mr Evans: Would you think that you would have to pay perhaps a bigger sum to initially get the licence and then reduce the sum? Ms Simmonds: We are past that stage, Nigel. You have the licence - everyone has the licence; they have been through transition and you do not on the whole create many more new sports clubs. So we are now talking about the ongoing burden of this annual fee that you pay on an annual basis. We have argued all the way through that either we should have all CASCs in category A because it is based on rateable value, or that all clubs should actually pay on the same basis that they get rate relief, which is 80%, so they only pay 20% of the annual fee, which we think would be a much fairer system. Q119 Mr Evans: So you think all this licence money that people have to pay on an annual basis is just there to prop up the bureaucracy that is not doing much? Ms Simmonds: It would be difficult to argue with that. Q120 Mr Evans: My next question was going to be about the fee increase which is proposed. As you know, Sir Les Elton has recommended a 7% increase per year for three years, which would be dramatic; so I think the question is redundant to be frank. Ms Simmonds: Can I just say, to do the sums on that, that if you had 10,000 premises you are talking about an increase of £160,000. That is an inordinate amount of money to put into sports or to any other club which is providing effectively very much a social service which, in our current climate, the way that we need connectivity at that local level, is the service that we are providing here. Q121 Chairman: Brigid, on that do you accept the principle that the fees paid by the whole estate should meet the costs? In other words, you would adjust the structure of the fees so that amateur sports clubs did not have to pay so much, but another part - maybe bigger establishments - would have to pay more to compensate? Ms Simmonds: I would write off the costs of introducing the Licensing Act because that is where the local authorities saw this great increase in costs - taking on from 155,000 licences from magistrates was a big undertaking. Now what we are talking is ongoing reviews, looking at risk registers, a certain amount of inspection and I think it is that bit that should be based on a smaller amount and less fees for clubs. Q122 Mr Evans: I want to scratch the surface now as to the impact that this is having - the new charges, the new licence applications, the time it takes to apply and all that sort of stuff, as compared to the old system, so that we know the full impact that this new regime is now having on clubs. Ms Simmonds: We have this annual fee situation, so you have that. You then have applications in some cases for Temporary Event Notices. One of the problems that clubs have, particularly if they are weather-affected, is how do you apply ten days in advance for a Temporary Event Notice if you are affected by the tide or the weather as to whether the event is going to go ahead at all? That is something by which sport is particularly afflicted. If you are a sailing club and you have to wait for the tide on a particular day then it is quite difficult to predict in advance whether it is going to be on this day or that day. So that system is quite complicated. The other problem we have is that if you make any variations at all you have to reapply; you have to reapply for your variation. It is dependent very much on your size but let us say it is £190 if you fall into category B for your variation, you have to re-advertise in the newspaper and you have to have your plans redrawn and re-submitted. So those are the sorts of burdens that I think sports clubs bear. Mr Smyth: Exactly the same for us - exactly. One thing about the TENs that I have never understood ever since the Act came out, the maximum you can have is 12 but one club official - shall we say the Secretary - can only apply for five and then perhaps the Treasurer has to apply for another five and the President for another two, and that all struck me as absolutely irrational. I still cannot understand why that happened. Q123 Mr Evans: Is this Temporary Event Licence just a figure plucked out of the air? Does it bear any resemblance to anything or do you think that for most clubs 12 is probably okay? Mr Smyth: No, we would prefer perhaps a figure of 20, something like that. Q124 Mr Evans: But you have just plucked that figure out of the air too. Mr Smyth: I have but I know that a number of clubs say that 12 is not enough. Barry obviously is a Secretary of a club. Mr Slasberg: For my own club we, I must admit, do try and ensure that we do not open to the public at all. We are very jealous of our private status and therefore we do not encourage public events. However, for many of the clubs in my area they do have a problem; you have to get people in and the TEN is a very useful tool to have. Yes, it would be helpful to a lot of clubs if they could have more than 12 in a year, simply on a survival basis because we are in recession, as you all know - talking of the club world - and what we all need to do is to be able to innovate. Innovate means trying new things and trying new things can be very difficult if you have a club premises certificate that is limited, and if you want to try something new you do not know if it is going to work and you have to go through all the rigmarole of getting permissions and then you might want to drop it after three months because you have had your trial and it does not work. Another thing that has come up - certainly with my club we have excellent relationships with our neighbours, we have excellent relationships with all the authorities but as soon as you put something on a lamppost that says "If you have any problems please put them forward to the local council" they come out of the woodwork. Certainly my club, when we went through this procedure, had a load of complaints. I spoke to all the complainants individually and said, "Why have you never come to the club? - We never thought we could." So this, quite honestly, although it is a good thing to allow people to make complaints, does encourage people out of the woodwork who have no basis of complaint and waste both the time of the officials and of the club and cause a lot of sleeplessness. Q125 Mr Evans: So the figure of 12 should be scrapped and it should be dramatically increased. Indeed, do you think there should be any limit? Mr Smyth: I think we probably need a limit because otherwise it may not be a private members' club any more and that obviously is what we are all here to protect. So I am not saying dramatically increase but 20 would be a lot better than 12. Q126 Chairman: But most of your clubs have premises' licences. Mr Smyth: No. Q127 Chairman: They do not? Mr Smyth: Very few; very, very few. Ms Simmonds: That is not true for sports clubs because sports clubs do have premises' licences. Q128 Chairman: So working men's clubs are operating on the Temporary Event Notice? Mr Smyth: Yes, they have the CPC and then they have the Temporary Event Notices, yes. There are probably less than 20 out of 2000. Q129 Chairman: Following up Nigel's question. Brigid you and indeed the Registered Club Associations have both made the point that as well as the fee which you have to pay there are a whole lot of other costs in terms of advertising, in terms of notification, in terms of maybe getting plans drawn up. What estimate have you made of the total cost of going through the licensing procedure? Ms Simmonds: I am not particularly keen to be retrospective on this. I could give you lots of costs of what it costs in the first place but it is now that we are talking about - these ongoing costs of dealing with all these things. There is no evidence that advertising in local newspapers actually does anything at all and that it is read by anybody. I have always thought that that should be scrapped and in the early days when the Better Regulation Commission reviewed the Licensing Act it suggested it should be scrapped, but it is not part of the de minimis or the changes that are being proposed by DCMS at the moment. Q130 Mr Evans: But if you scrap it how would you inform the public? Ms Simmonds: You have to put a notice on the posters anyway and you have to put notices around - it is like planning permission - so for those people who are in the vicinity of your area that is a perfectly good way of doing it and, if necessary, put notices in your public library. But advertising is hugely costly; in London you are only talking realistically at advertising in the London Standard and so you are talking about a lot of money and then if you then have to go out and have professional help, as a lot of these clubs have had to do, then that increases your cost enormously if you have to have plans drawn up of your premises and where the bars are and if you want to make changes. In the case of sport obviously quite a lot of the whole of the sports area would be licensed - it would not only be just necessarily a bar. So every time you have to go back to the licensing authorities - the system is mad. We would very much welcome the minor variation to the procedures and obviously that would reduce the cost and that is one of the proposals, and under minor variations you would not be required to advertise. But taking away advertising would be helpful. Mr Smyth: Of course, it was rather ironic that once the Act was actually proposed and just before it came into effect suddenly all the local provincial papers' advertising rates went up about 200% because they could see that this was a place where they could make money, and that cost clubs more than they anticipated and wanted to pay, obviously. Chairman: It is the case that local
newspapers are in some financial difficulties and I think that they would be
extremely alarmed at seeing this sort of revenue also disappearing. I agree that you are not there to keep local
newspapers in business. Q131 Mr Sanders: There is also an issue that not everybody is necessarily going to be walking around and seeing notices and I think it is absolutely right that it should be advertised to a wider audience - they have a right to know. Just as with planning applications they are not just posted up on the lamp post, they also have to be advertised in local newspapers. I just wonder why you think it should be different. Ms Simmonds: I was not aware that planning applications had to be advertised in local newspapers but you certainly get notices and you get letters from the local authority and that might be a simpler way of doing it - you get a letter saying, "This is being considered next door and you have the opportunity to comment on it." There is no reason why a system like that could not be introduced for licensing. Q132 Mr Sanders: That would be helpful; I would agree with you there. We have a difficulty in that DCMS maintains that no new or additional evidence has been presented since it received the Final Report of the Independent Fees Review Panel to indicate that the Act has had a detrimental financial impact on sports and social clubs. So is there any fresh evidence, a body of evidence, a report or something that could be made available? Ms Simmonds: We work very closely with DCMS, as the Committee is probably aware, particularly to promote the Community Amateur Sports Club scheme, and we did a survey of all clubs last year which found that 51% of them were either running at a loss or just about breaking even. DCMS have those figures and, as you know, they have been working with us and the Treasury to try and enhance the Community Amateur Sports Club scheme and we will be looking at whether we can introduce gift aid on junior subscriptions, which is something that we very much want. And in many cases they have supported us when extra burdens are added to clubs because it is not only the Licensing Act, just to look at some of the ones that we are facing at the moment. We have drainage where they are trying to move from a system which was based on rateable value to the whole size of the area - this was raised by the Liberal Democrats in the House - and it could be a 318% increase for clubs in those sorts of costs, which would cost £10 million a year. We have CIL, the Community Infrastructure Levy. At the moment all these questions that are being asked in the House suggest that sport is going to have to pay CIL, which I think is again absolutely mad. Non for profit organisations, they may exempt charities in the front of the Act but that of course will not count for either social clubs or for sports clubs even though they are not for profit. Music - we have licences for composers, £370 a year; PPL £116 a year for publishing. It is cumulative; it is not only the cost of the Licensing Act but DCMS have plenty of evidence which makes it absolutely clear that community sport needs some help, and in straightforward government terms if we are going to introduce this Five Hour Offer for sport in schools then you need help from clubs. We cannot achieve that within the curriculum, so there is a real advantage in helping community sports clubs which, exactly like Kevin's clubs, are run, on the whole, by volunteers. Q133 Mr Sanders: Are you aware of any work being undertaken in that area - contact between DCMS and representative bodies - to see how the voluntary clubs can help government deliver that sports target? Ms Simmonds: The government is helping us very much with talking to the Treasury about this in terms of a gift aid scheme on junior subscriptions - they have done a lot of work there. We would like to have more contact, probably with the Cabinet Office, which is responsible for the sector. There are a lot of very good words talked about it but in this economic situation in which we are the cost of gift aid would probably only be about £4 million; so we are hoping that the government might consider that. Some of the other costs are greater. As ever, it is the burden placed on clubs by other government departments which you then have to pick up and run with. We would be delighted if someone would take up this drainage scheme problem that we have because that will be an ongoing, huge burden, particularly on sport because of all the pitches that we support. Q134 Chairman: What do the Registered Club Associations think? Mr Smyth: We obviously have not got into discussion on the same lines as the sports community because they provide sporting activities for youngsters, which we do not do to anywhere near the same extent. We do obviously have junior football teams and that sort of thing, representing a number of clubs - I can remember that Barry's team actually won a trophy only last year. It is, as Brigid said, cumulative. I know it is not your responsibility but the Gambling Act came up with something whereby --- Q135 Chairman: It is actually! Mr Smyth: With gambling, if you are a club that plays bingo over so much then all of a sudden you are faced with a £2000 fee per year and that is going up by another £400 this year. It all builds up and up and up. Brigid said she had 51% of her clubs that were running at a loss or just about breaking even. I believe it to be true that we are about 80%, struggling - really struggling. More clubs are leaving the union because they are just about to cease. I had one yesterday from the Liberal Club on the Isle of Wight, "We are very sorry to say that after 105 years of existence we just cannot afford to go on." Q136 Chairman: I should have perhaps also added at the beginning that I am a patron of the Maldon Conservative Constitutional Club and they are finding life very difficult from a variety of different pressures - obviously the economic recession, compounded by the smoking ban, which has had a very damaging effect. So do you have any idea as to the numbers of clubs that are going out of business because of all these pressures? Mr Smyth: Last year and for previous years we have lost about 50, so I am not going to say it has suddenly happened - it has been a steady drip of perhaps losing 50 clubs. But purely in my organisation, which is the working men's club, I anticipate about 150 not paying their fee and if they do not pay their fee then within two or three months that is a sign that they will not be in existence; so it has tripled. Q137 Chairman: Amongst all these different pressures how significant do you think are the additional costs resulting from the Licensing Act? Mr Smyth: It adds up. Yes, it is not as great as the smoking ban but again it all accumulates and eventually you are at the top of the cliff. Ms Simmonds: I think the licensing fees are a significant part of that - moving from £16 to £200 and something is mad. Mr Slasberg: If I may, for me, I think there is a great change that I have seen over the years in that our clubs have always been recognised as non-profit making and serving the community. More and more as legislation goes through we are being put on an even playing field with commercial business, and I think that is what is killing us, quite honestly. We provide alcohol but whatever comes out of that goes to our members, it is purely for them, whereas a pub is in there for profit and nothing else. It is almost like saying that the table tennis league should play the same rules as the rugby league because they are both sports. It is a nonsense and it is a nonsense that non-profit making clubs should be treated in the same way as profit-making licensed premises because they are a wholly different animal, which used to be recognised but more and more, I feel, is not being recognised, and that is one of the major planks which is putting our clubs, which are community based and are there serving the community, very much at risk, I believe. Q138 Chairman: Can I just explore that with you? The CCPR will make the case - indeed have made the case - that sports clubs are delivering government objectives, which is healthy living and increasing sports participation, and generally are of huge benefit to the community and they need on licence sales to support them. The working men's clubs are not able to make quite the same claims in terms of overall benefit, are they? Mr Slasberg: I believe that the working men's clubs can put forward a very great claim for work within their communities. For instance, we have a brain damaged group that use our club; we have kidney patients who use our club, and anybody else can come in. We also provide facilities for families, a safe haven that they can come to because of our policing of the use of alcohol. I am not saying that nobody gets drunk in a working men's club but because of our policing and requirement for reasonable behaviour and the threat of expulsion for bad behaviour these things mean a lot, because we have generations of people coming to the same club. So whilst people are being put out of work they do have somewhere to go where they can have refreshment and have it cheaply; they can just watch TV and have a glass of water if they want - they are not obliged to buy within the club. So people can get out of their home environment, out of the stress of their own financial burdens into somewhere where they can communicate with each other and just relax. It is not the fantastic image of the sports clubs, I will give you that, but it is a vital and very urgent need that our clubs are maintained because we are the centre of the community and if you lose that then where do people who are stressed, distressed and poor safely go? I do not think there are many places that are around nowadays that they can use. Ms Simmonds: Just to finalise that discussion, the impact of the licensing cost increases is the same as ten adult average club memberships. The average rugby club has 80 adults, so this equates to a 12% reduction. Q139 Alan Keen: I do not want to get too far away from the actual licensing itself but you have been talking about the situation overall and even before the credit problems that we are getting now, licensed premises - whether clubs or pubs - have been facing difficulties because of the smoking ban and that sort of thing. Are the breweries any less helpful to clubs than they used to be because their own premises are struggling? Have you noticed any difference? Mr Slasberg: I think breweries are beginning to fight for the business now because they are definitely out for survival themselves. Having said that, the majority of our clubs are run by amateurs - they are run by working men and working women with not necessarily a lot of professional expertise. The breweries are out to make money and they will help if you go to them but some people just do not know how far they can go to them. We are not professionally run, although we do have some support from our head office - we do have training programmes that people can go on - but you put a sales executive from a big brewery up against a clothes salesman from one of the local stores and that rep is going to have a much more likely chance of coming out on top of his argument at the end of the day. Countering that slightly, the breweries do want places to stay open because they want to sell their beer, but they want to get the most out of them and I do not think that we have the expertise to get the most out of the breweries sometimes. Q140 Alan Keen: I visited a place on Saturday afternoon - only drinking coffee - at the request of a tenant and the tenant was saying that the brewery was getting pretty tough with him and he thought that unreasonable. His pub is quite close to managed houses of the brewery itself and it did look as if the breweries were taking pretty strong action to look after their own core business, and that is why he was asking the question. Here we are obviously talking about the Licensing Act and we must not stray too far from it, but the point you have been making about the contribution that working men's clubs make and sports clubs, of course, do you think that some time in the future this Committee maybe should look at the whole business that we are in danger of making it difficult for clubs to operate. We know that the licensed trade helps to support clubs of all sorts and you give social support and sports clubs contribute to healthy living, but do you think there is a danger of us going on a downward spiral socially? Ms Simmonds: Moving back to the Licensing Act, we have recently been faced by this Safe, Sensible, Social, which is a consultation from the Department of Health and with it came very much at the end proposals on a mandatory code which would have absolutely crippled sport and social clubs. Some of the things that would be introduced we would all have had to do mandatory training; we would have to have sensible drinking messages in entrances to bars and all premises; where no medium must be used to advertise alcoholic drinks if more than 25% of its audience is under the age of 18. Effectively you would stop any advertisements at any football, rugby, cricket or other spectator sport if that was introduced because of course over 25% of them are under the age of 18 - that is why we want to encourage young people to go and watch and support that. You would have to have information at each point of sale saying that it is illegal to sell alcohol or buy alcohol for those under the age of 18. Why on earth do you need all of those signs? We all know it is illegal to sell alcohol under the age of 18. And you would be required to consult the police every time you had either a live or recorded event on television. I cannot imagine what a waste of time that would be. So we are faced, Alan, with being tarred with the same brush of any sort of alcohol premises. I clearly believe that we should be making these things targeted. I think the Department of Health has recently looked at, in particular, the northwest and perhaps people over the age of 50 who are drinking too much, and targeting those particular things. If we are going to take any particular action - and Kevin and I were discussing this yesterday - it would probably be to introduce minimum pricing because that is one of the big problems for us all - people going off and buying it more cheaply in the supermarkets; and I think we would also be in favour of stopping promotions. So targeted action against people who are drinking too much - do not take action against those who are providing premises, do not drive drinking underground and providing premises where people, as you have rightly said, Barry, can come and drink safely and sensibly and under certain restrictions and within a social atmosphere. Q141 Paul Farrelly: I have read the suggestions that the CCPR, for example, has suggested that CASC clubs - and I have been involved in promoting the CASC scheme here at Parliament and in my local community - should be a special category identifiable and exempt or the subject of rebates. We have heard that working men's clubs, for instance, might be a category. Is this not just a nibbling around the edges trying to find definitions of establishments that should be treated differently but that would be subjected to more bureaucracy? Should not the regime just be overhauled so that if you want to delegate these decisions to local councils you give them the power to make - their democratic choice - certain places exempt or not? So that they have the power to do that without bureaucracy and if they wish then to bear the cost themselves then it is up to them. Ms Simmonds: I think you would suffer very badly from lack of national consistency. I think that would be the concern about working with local authorities - some would do it, some would not. The great thing about the CASC scheme is a scheme which is completely waterproof - you are either a CASC and if you are a CASC you have to follow various Treasury guidance about the charges that you pay, what your charge is in terms of subscriptions, about various things that you do within your club - you have to be truly voluntary. It is a system that is there. I would be much more in favour of doing that. We are all part of the club premises, so exempt all of those or give them a reduced fee - you could easily do that within the Licensing Act. I think giving discretion to local authorities would just lead to different arrangements around the country. If I could give you an example where you have a scheme where local authorities can, on a discretionary basis, reduce rent relief for community clubs whether a CASC or not. Some do it, some refuse to do it; it is not a system that works well. Mr Smyth: You can have a club on one side of the street getting some relief and the club on the other side does not. Mr Slasberg: I am going along with these guys! Q142 Paul Farrelly: I am a member of the Halmerend working men's club in my constituency - it is one of the clubs I am a member of - but this is one small rural area. I use the Wood Lane Cricket Club and the Audley football club amongst many of the small sports clubs in the area. But I also use regularly the Gresley Arms, which is a village pub, which would rightly complain if those other places around the area were treated differently when it was struggling to survive. So there is a real difficulty. If my local council wanted to say, "Actually we wanted to promote the existence of village pubs, therefore we will give the Gresley Arms and other places - not those pubs in the town which take enough money and quite often are the cause of antisocial behaviour - an exemption; likewise we will give Halmerend working men's club an exemption because we want to promote working men's clubs, and sports clubs because we think that sport is important as well." So what is wrong with that? Ms Simmonds: I would prefer that you gave the club premises' certificates the exemption and then gave them the ability to make that decision about rural pubs, because if you look at the figures that are coming out of the BPPA five premises a week are closing and, unfortunately, if you are not careful it is the wrong premises, the rural premises that are closing down - it is not necessarily affecting so much the high street. So, no, I would be very much in favour of that system working for the rest of them but I would be more in favour of us having an umbrella encompassing exemption based on the fact that we are sports and social clubs with club premises' certificates. Mr Evans: For the record it is actually five a day. Q143 Paul Farrelly: There are three Legislative Reform Orders which are being contemplated now. Are they just again nibbling at the edges or do you see them as a vehicle, particularly with the certain as yet to be defined activities from the regime as a possible way forward? Ms Simmonds: One of them would not really affect us because we do not have designated premises' supervisors. I think the minor variations would be hugely helpful and I have already talked about that. The de minimis activities concerning music which are not yet public exactly what is being planned, again it would be helpful as far as all of us are concerned. Q144 Paul Farrelly: Have you given some thought as to whether now is the appropriate time to revise this or should the whole regime be looked at in total when the government finally comes round to the controversial review of the rateable values around the country? Mr Slasberg: I think we are getting to a situation now where certainly within the next year or two things are going to become very, very critical. I can only speak for the working men's club and I can see the arguments for the local pubs and what have you; but from the point of view of the working men's club, a non-profit making club, I believe it is critical now that something is done to reverse the trend to use us as a form of income and to positively encourage the expansion of our activities. I believe it is a vital social necessity. You might say it is picking around at the edges - picking around at the edges maybe to start with, but it is going to need, I think, a drastic overhaul long-term to get things right. I know that you cannot do all things at one time but we are moving in the wrong direction legislatively, I believe - we are becoming more and more encumbered with rules, which means that we cannot get the people to manage our clubs because they are afraid. We have a new penalty regime coming in from the Inland Revenue, which scares everybody silly, from next year onwards. The legislation is stopping people from wanting to help in non-profit making clubs, whilst at the same time demanding that the running of these clubs are far more detailed and intricate than is necessary, I believe, to the good running of the clubs and to the good welfare of the members. Ms Simmonds: I would not be in favour of yet another Licensing Act. I think we have a Licensing Act that works; I think local authorities and the police make it absolutely clear that it works. We have to use the powers that they have in the Act against premises that are causing problems, and stop every other government department trying to interfere and making this such a huge health issue with a whole series of things like units, that no one in the public space understands or actually believes on a daily basis is causing them individual harm. So, no; do things for the clubs and do things for sports clubs under the existing Act, and there is plenty of space to be able to do that. The only thing I would argue about is these Legislative Reform Orders take for ever. Q145 Paul Farrelly: One final question for Mr Smyth. We might have a perception problem really if we start doing special favours for political clubs like the Maldon Conservative Association or the Liberal club in the Isle of Wight; do you agree? Mr Smyth: There is a good number of political clubs. Philip Smith behind me is the Secretary of the Conservative Clubs and he has 1100. There are 2200 working men's clubs, 750 British Legion; so in total there is a hell of a lot. You obviously cannot discriminate between one political club and another but most of these political clubs are still not for profit. Ms Simmonds: As long as you do it for all political parties! Chairman: That is all we have for you; thank you very much. Memoranda submitted by Association of Circus Proprietors and Zippo's Circus Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Mr Malcolm Clay, Secretary, Association of Circus Proprietors of Great Britain and Mr Martin Burton, Founder Director, Zippo's Circus, gave evidence. Chairman: For the second time in this session we are now going to look at the specific impact of the Licensing Act on touring circuses and I would like to welcome Malcolm Clay, the Secretary of the Association of Circus Proprietors of Great Britain and Martin Burton, the Founder and Director of Zippo's Circus. Adrian Sanders is going to start. Q146 Mr Sanders: Martin - or Zippo! - welcome. You say in your submission that the government changed its mind on whether or not circuses should be licensed. Has it been explained why? Mr Burton: It has never been explained why at all. We received a letter a long time before the Licensing Act 2003 from the Home Office saying that circuses would not be drawn into licensing and we more or less therefore took it off our radar and at the very last moment it appears that circuses would be brought within the Act. We had no time by then to consult or be part of the process of consulting with the people who were drawing up the Act. Q147 Mr Sanders: You have also disagreed with the government's view on musical entertainment. Would you like to explain a bit more on that; that you differentiate musical entertainment within a circus to say how it is treated in a fairground? Mr Burton: No, I think that music in a
fairground is incidental, I can appreciate that; and I think by and large that
music in a circus is incidental: that is, a juggler can still juggle without
any music accompanying him and a trapeze artist can still make his or her
tricks on the trapeze. The music, I
believe, is incidental. The days when
you might have a poster that said, "Zippo's Circus featuring lions, tigers,
elephants and Harry's Big Band of 14" - we do not advertise the music on the
programme. In fact you will find, as I
was reminded only this morning, it is quite difficult to find out the names of
the pieces of music that might accompany various acts because very often if it
is a live band it is something that is more or less improvised. So I think that the music is quite incidental
and, as we proved recently, in Mr Clay: Could I explain that before the introduction of the Act circus was an unlicensed entertainment and the authority was two-fold: in the provinces there was a specific statutory exemption for circuses from entertainment licensing; in the London boroughs it was by decided case, where it was held that the music played at a circus was ancillary to the entertainment, so that circuses were never licensed when they performed within the London boroughs, on the basis that the public did not buy circus tickets to listen to the music - they watched a performance. I think the gent said at the time that the lady dancing on the back of a bareback horse may have been performing to music but it was the performance of the lady that the public were paying to see and the music was only incidental to that. Q148 Mr Sanders: I find it difficult to understand a circus without music. You said you had a performance without music in Birmingham? Mr Burton: I had some well publicised
complications in Q149 Chairman: One of the purposes of licenses is that if an event is to be held at which a very large number of people are expected to attend then there are potential problems in terms of traffic congestion, in terms of the possibility of some kind of disorder or certainly crowd management and is it not therefore the case that with a circus which might attract a large number of people to each performance they should at least tell the local authority that this is going to happen and that the local authority should have the opportunity to maybe impose some conditions? Mr Clay: Traditionally local authorities have always been aware that a circus was visiting and I think this is borne out by the fact that prior to licensing we had very strict health and safety inspections which were undertaken by the local authority environmental health department. Fairgrounds are inspected by the HSE but circuses are inspected by the local authorities, and we must be possibly the only business that was being inspected on a weekly basis by environmental health because in every town that we went to inevitably the inspector would turn up and he would look at what we call the travel distances within tents - that is the point from perhaps the furthest seat to perhaps the public exit from the tent; look at fire precautions, extinguishers, etcetera, where people were perhaps likely to trip. So we have never traditionally had a problem with the local authority not being aware that we were in the town; and of course the whole of the circus industry is very publicity orientated, and if the locals did not know that we were there then you would not get the crowds that you were perhaps envisaging. Q150 Chairman: You said that prior to the Act you were not licensed but that during the passage of the Act you were given reason to believe that you would be exempt. Can you set out to us exactly why you felt you were told that? Mr Clay: The correspondence was with
me as the Secretary of the trade body.
When the Licensing Act kicked off it was with the Home Office and I
received the consultation document from the Home Office, the name of which is
something like Time for a Change. I immediately wrote to the Home Office and
said, "Are you suggesting that circuses are now going to be brought into
licensing?" and the response was, "We do not know." I then wrote to the Home Office with a full
explanation of why previously we had not been licensed, whether it was in the Q151 Chairman: Although DCMS said that they had changed their minds and it was the government's intention that circuses should be licensed, I know from the evidence that you have submitted that in actual fact in large parts of the country in practice they are not because the local licensing officer decides that it is not necessary to have a licence. Mr Clay: I think licensing officers are in a very difficult position. If they look at the Licensing Act there is nothing which specifically licences circuses. The authority for licensing circuses is within the DCMS guidance, which was issued in both the first edition and the second edition, which contains statements about the music being an important part of the performance. I think in the first rush of licensing that licensing officers went strictly by the DCMS advice. I think having got other issues out of the way because of the licensing of pubs and clubs etcetera they have looked at this and some of them are prepared to take their own line and say, "We do not think circus is a licensable entertainment. It is the inconsistency which is the problem because you can go to a town where the licensing officer says, "No, don't worry. I don't want an application," and then perhaps the next week you go seven miles down the road into the next borough and you have to be licensed because the officer is not as flexible. Q152 Chairman: Can you give us any indications of what proportion of licensing officers think you should be and what proportion do not? Mr Clay: My experience is that the licensing officers in the rural areas are less inclined to want to license circuses and the officers in the cities and major towns are probably more likely to want to license circuses. Mr Burton: My experience is that Zippo's Circus will write a very detailed letter to the local licensing officer explaining what is in our circus and explaining why we think that is non-licensable and they will write back and agree or disagree with us. Increasingly as this year has gone on licensing officers have declared my circus and its content as non-licensable. Clearly there are activities which bring a form of entertainment within the Licensing Act and clearly not all circuses are the same, although I would suggest most touring ones are quite similar to mine. If we look in the recent past, then since July 80% of licensing officers that we have asked have declared my circus non-licensable. That, of course, would not be every single venue because we do hold some premises licences, but when the question has been asked 80% now would say ours is a non-licensable form of entertainment. Q153 Chairman: So is the problem slowly disappearing? Mr Burton: It is not slowly disappearing
because, as Malcolm has already said, there is an inconsistency because you do
not know when somebody is going to turn round and suddenly say, "Yes, this is
licensable," which is what happened to me in Q154 Chairman: Is there not a danger that DCMS issues some very clear guidance that may actually result in some of the licensing officers who presently say you are not licensable deciding that you are? Mr Burton: Of course there is that danger, although I have met with the past four ministers at the DCMS and, without exception, every one of the four has agreed that the circuses' licensing situation is currently unsatisfactory and needs sorting. I do not think that we have necessarily always agreed how it should be sorted, but the principle of is there a case to answer and should this be sorted out better is agreed by all parties, so I am quite confident that the willingness is there within the DCMS to tackle this problem. Mr Clay: It is this grey area which is so difficult to contend with. If we have a juggler (and juggling is not a licensable activity) and the juggler has a girl assistant who wiggles about and passes him his hoops and clubs, is she dancing? People are smiling but it is a serious point. Where on the scale does the juggler's assistant come into the area of dance? At the moment Zippo's Circus has a Spanish boy on a low wire who kicks his legs and dances. Is dancing on the tight wire, although it is a circus skill, included within the definition of dancing? The dancing is only an artistic way of expressing the routine. We have these grey areas. Licensing officers are saying, "We don't really want to be bothered. We've never had problems with circuses." The first time that we had a licensing officer who said, "I don't think categorically you should be licensed," we mentioned it to the DCMS and they then had a go at the licensing officer and said, "No, you mustn't say that." Mr Burton: I am now reluctant to give you the names of those officers. Q155 Chairman: We will not press you on the names. In their submission to us the DCMS has suggested, slightly bizarrely, that you should be treated in the same way as an aircraft or a train in that you might have a portable premises licence issued by the local authority where the circus is based. Does that hold any attraction for you? Mr Clay: Yes, I think it holds considerable attraction. If the concern from the DCMS is health and safety and the internal layout of tents --- That is not a point which the industry accepts because the DCMS do not seem to understand that we are still inspected by the Environmental Health Department who we always look upon as having responsibility for the circus industry. If we were to have effectively a travelling licence where our home authority or a designated local authority looks at our tent and looks at our seating and the way that it is put together and says that is acceptable and it meets the HSE standards, we would be happy with that. The overall problem is this flexibility, having to change routes at the last minute. It is a coincidence that since the introduction of the Act we have had two of the worst summers in living memory when we would normally expect to be on nice dry parks and we save the hard standing as there is only a limited number of hard standing circus sites that we will visit in either spring or autumn, but instead the circuses have had parks booked which have just been so soft that either the council has said, "I'm sorry, but we're not going to let you churn the park up," or we know that if we drive onto that park then the cost of reinstating it afterwards is going to wipe out any potential profit. If we had had a bad summer four years ago we would have looked round very quickly for a suitable hard site, possibly a football ground car park which, if the fixtures are right, may work for us. We have two problems. The first is that 28 days notice for a premises licence is the minimum if everything goes smoothly. If there is an objection, however spurious it is, then it is all going to be too late for us, but very rarely will you know 28 days in advance that you are going to have four weeks of persistent rain. A lot of circus sites do dry out surprisingly quickly. The 28 days notice does not work for us. The TENS does not work because you still have your notice period which can be a problem. Circus tents accommodate between 500 and 1,100 people maximum. The circuses trade from Tuesday to Sunday. Everything is wrong for us with TENS. Q156 Chairman: You would not be allowed a tent above 500, would you? Mr Clay: No. That is the problem. The smaller end of the industry would scrape in on the TENS. The larger ones cannot, which is unfortunate because the circus, being an activity which does not sell alcohol and an activity which finishes by 9.30 pm or 10 pm at the latest, is brought into a system which is really designed for dancing, the selling of alcohol, et cetera, but there is no other avenue available to us. We cannot cope with either the notice for a premises licence and very rarely can the TENS system accommodate what we need. It goes back to the point that had there been consultation and an understanding of how the industry works we would not have been shoehorned into this situation. We have been faced with a different premises licence every week for a 40-week season, whereas your local pub or club has one licence application to make. That would never have happened if there had been consultation. Q157 Mr Evans: Malcolm, we are sometimes accused of being a bit of a circus here, none more so than when you brought the circus to Westminster a few months ago! We are extremely grateful to you for doing that because it gave us a great insight into what you do. Few people have any idea as to the costs of these licences that would fall on - if there is such a thing - an average circus. Can you give us an idea of what costs circuses have to meet? Mr Clay: When we started licensing we
calculated that the licences were costing £1,000 a time. The public notices column of your local paper
is the most expensive column to advertise in.
If we could have advertised in the entertainments column it would have
been cheaper. We have the problem of
trying to affix the notices to trees in parks and railings where if you put
them out of reach of the locals who are tempted to pull them down then people
cannot read them. You are probably
operating your business Q158 Mr Evans: You seem to have a running theme on advertisements in local newspapers. Could you just say how effective you think advertising in the local newspapers the licence application is? Do you think it is the most cost-effective way of doing it? Mr Burton: Are you asking me whether people read the public notice columns? Q159 Mr Evans: Yes. Mr Burton: I think they read those when their own son or daughter is getting married, otherwise they do not bother. No, it is not effective. The blue notices bring it to people's attention, but there is a problem with keeping the blue notices up and that is that I am afraid kids like to take them down. Q160 Mr Evans: The Act has been going for some time now. I presume that most circuses have applied for premises licences in virtually all the sites that you would ever appear. Mr Clay: It does not quite work like that because a lot of councils will allocate their site to one circus one year but say next year we want a different circus or the year after we want a different circus. The licence is specific to that operator and not to the site. You may have a succession of annual premises applications for the same site. Circuses are forever looking at different sites. You lose sites due to redevelopment or local events that are taking place in the park. Certainly we are over the first wave of applications, but this is going to be a continuing process because of the change of sites. We are not altogether sure what we will do when we change our tents and seating because an application --- To the layman perhaps all circus tents are alike but they are not quite the same, nor is the seating quite the same. So when we go back two years later and it is a new tent (because tents have a limited life), are we then required to make a new application? This is why the system just does not fit the industry. Q161 Mr Evans: You have just mentioned the costs which I would have said are substantial because that money has got to come from somewhere and it is a cost that you did not have to meet before this regime came in. In your estimation is the new licensing regime and the costs involved with it putting circuses out of business? Is it threatening the livelihoods of certain circuses in this country? Mr Burton: Can I give you a very clear
example of a hardship my circus suffered last year? We were due to open in Q162 Mr Evans: That is the difference between your circus and the Cirque du Soleil where the music is very important there. Mr Burton: I would rather use the example of the circus musical Barnum, which is a theatrical production, but clearly there is a sliding scale and somebody needs to make a judgement. The DCMS will be in very tricky waters if it ever tried to define a circus. There are dragons. I warn you, do not go there! To leave it to somebody's individual discretion and where people can sit down and argue it out clearly works in practice because I am doing it now, and you can change it just by changing the guidance notes and it is very cheap. Mr Clay: I think you were concerned about the actual cost of the licence application. It does create a strain and I think circuses have been resilient and they cut a bit here and there. You are a businessman. There is a limit as to just how much you can keep cutting. Against that we have got to balance the fact that circuses are one of the few commercial live entertainments that spread right across the country. The circus industry is touring from the very south-west right up to the north of Scotland, which I know is a different regulation, but they are going to a lot of small towns where there is no permanent commercial live entertainment source. For a lot of children their first experiences of live entertainment are circuses and pantomime and it is the circus that goes to them; the children you have to take to the pantomime. If you look at the smallest members of my Association, say Lawson's circus which is based in Kent and which plays two places every week and just sticks to the large villages and the small towns and he goes back to those same places frequently because he has his reputation, it is a part of the culture, it is something which annually the people look forward to there, but he has problems, he has lost places this year because of the rain. He loses sites because they are now being used for something else. So the cost of the licence is a problem, but it is the loss of trading which is a greater problem in that if you have a circus which may well have expenses of £20,000 a week or more and you are stuck in a car park for a week because you cannot trade, that is an awful lot of expense to pull back over the rest of the season. I listened to what Martin said about this Home Office licence, which I think may well be the compromise, but I am certainly attracted to a very clear indication from DCMS as to whether a circus is licensable or not. On the wording which we should be looking at from the DCMS, a circus would not normally be a licensable activity and then if it does go over the edge because it is a large production show, which we tend not to see touring in tents, then fine, it brings it into the regime. It is this very nebulous advice from the DCMS at present while the music may be incidental or it may not be incidental. Part of the advice that we had originally was that a lion trainer (not that we have lion trainers) or a high wire walker would not make the circus licensable but that clowns would make the circus licensable because a clown act basically is a mini drama. It is very difficult to run a business based on those sort of interpretations. Q163 Chairman: Finally, you have suggested that it might be different in Scotland at the moment and that the regime is easier in Scotland. Does that represent a potential way forward? Mr Clay: Chairman: I think that is it. Thank you very much. Memoranda submitted by Association of Convenience Stores and The Wine and Spirit Trade Association
Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Mr James Lowman, Chief Executive, Association of Convenience Stores, and Mr Jeremy Beadles, Chief Executive, The Wine and Spirit Trade Association, gave evidence.
Chairman: For the final part of this session can I welcome James Lowman, the Chief Executive of the Association of Convenience Stores, and Jeremy Beadles, the Chief Executive of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association. I know that Nigel Evans wishes to make a short statement and then he is going to commence the questioning. Q164 Mr Evans: I am declaring an interest in as much as I own a retail convenience store in Swansea which has an off-licence department in it. James, what have been the benefits of the Licensing Act for the trade and for its customers? Mr Lowman: The Act has created more flexibility around local decision-making by local authorities, with case-by-case conditions placed on licences and so on. It has led to opportunities for longer hours, albeit they are pretty rarely taken up in our sector. Most convenience stores open long hours anyway, but very few have taken the opportunity of the Licensing Act 2003 to extend those hours. Customers could then benefit through that greater flexibility and greater opportunities to access the whole of a store rather than, as under the old Act, certain parts of the store being locked up at certain times. The costs are significant for convenience stores. Most of the benefits in terms of reduced costs under the Act have accrued to pubs and clubs and those who have public entertainment licences because they have seen those licensing systems brought into one and that has made a saving for our members. You would not expect any to have public entertainment licences and so we have seen a very significant increase in costs from around £30 for three years for the old licence up to a cost of well over £100 a year under the current system, so it has been a massive uplift in cost. Q165 Mr Evans: How do you think the enforcement agencies should proceed if they suspect that a retail outlet may be breaching the conditions of its licence? Mr Lowman: They should - and the Act provides for it - speak to that premises. They should make sure they have evidence of how the licence is being breached. If the type of breach was, for example, selling to under-age people - and the likely type of breach varies between pubs, clubs and off-licences - then evidence should be gathered. I think the best approach is to work with the retailer to try and improve standards, to try and address any issues around training and so on. If the retailer is not improving, there are opportunities to place conditions on that licence which are appropriate to that specific premises, and then ultimately the local authority can seek revocation of the licence. If someone is irresponsible and not improving and showing no signs of improving, we would entirely support the revocation of a licence in those circumstances. Q166 Mr Evans: What about sending in people who are under age? Mr Lowman: To buy? As test purchasing? Q167 Mr Evans: Yes. Mr Lowman: That tends to happen a lot. Local authorities and the police can do that activity either on the basis of trying to gather evidence for a licence review by targeting specific premises or, probably more likely, as part of an authority-wide campaign or a targeted campaign on a certain part of that local authority area to try and gather evidence about under-age purchases that are taking place. It may be based on a licence review or it might be based on other evidence or it might just be pretty much random. Q168 Mr Evans: The fact is that there is always this general impression that if people who are under age are drunk or are drinking they have not got their alcohol from a pub, they have got it from an off-licence, or it is somebody over-age going in and getting it for them or youngsters going in themselves and the retailer just selling it to them willy-nilly because they just do not care, they just want to make a sale. What would you say to that accusation? Mr Lowman: I do not think that is a widely held perception. All the evidence from test purchasing campaigns shows that the off-trade generally does better than the on-trade in test purchasing. There are different sample sizes and we can argue all day about how those figures have been arrived at. There is certainly no evidence from those campaigns that the off-trade is particularly bad in terms of its likelihood to sell to under-age people. In the real world, in pubs, clubs, large and small shops, specialist off-licences, convenience stores, however you want to categorise them, there are a very, very small number of people who deserve very strong enforcement. The vast majority of people want to try to uphold the law and stay within the law. People make mistakes in all parts of the sector. I cannot say none of ours members has ever sold to someone under age because they have, but I think it is a problem that goes right across the trade and the solutions are improving. Certainly in our sector, while I am absolutely not trying to shift the blame to someone else and say it is not our problem, it clearly is, it is an issue we have been improving on. We look better than other parts of the sector when the test purchase results are published. Q169 Mr Evans: As far as your own guidance to your own members is concerned, do you give any guidance about the retail of alcohol? Do you think there is a problem, particularly with smaller enterprises, where there is a high turnover of staff in that there is not sufficient training for staff about the retail of alcohol? Mr Lowman: Yes. We promote the Challenge 21 policy and indeed I think over time that will move up in terms of the age limit a person will be challenged at. The purpose behind that is to say that if someone looks under 21 they should be challenged for proof of age to give the retailer and member of staff leeway. Judging whether someone is 18 or is 18 years a day or 17 and 363 days is impossible. You have to give yourself some leeway to make a judgement about that person's age. We are bringing about a cultural change in the trade here through cross-industry effort, including some large retailers as well, where you now are increasingly seeing people who are 19, 20, 21 or even older being challenged for proof of age. That is really important and it is good that that is happening. In terms of training, there is a high turnover of staff. Increasingly professional operators are making sure that people, before they get anywhere near a till, are trained in a number of provisions of the law and management of the business, but this is probably the number one issue. When we talk to retailers about business this is number one because the penalties are very severe and people can and do lose their licences on the basis of making under-age sales. Mr Beadles: We provide the secretariat to
the Retail of Alcohol Standards Group and that is a pan-industry grouping of
large and small business and James is a part and the British Retail Consortium
is a part and Challenge 21 is the principle it was based on, but we have moved
beyond that and we have shared best practice in terms of training and in the
course of the last couple of years we have dramatically changed how we train
staff. It was very simple, it was based
around "Here is the law. Do not break
it." What we have discovered is it is a
much more complex issue than that. We
have involved a couple of universities in working out why, when you have just
trained someone and you send them out into the shop floor, 20 minutes later
they sell to an under age person. What
makes them do that? They are not bad
people on the whole so why do they do it?
A lot of it comes down to the psychology of how you assess someone's age
and then how you make the challenge. We
have discovered that men and women do things very differently in terms of how
they assess age and how they make a challenge.
We have been working on the training programmes to get them to have a
better understanding of how you work out how old someone is and then how you
make the challenge in a way that does not lead to confrontation, particularly
in the late night environment where that can be a serious problem. We are developing Challenge 21 and some of
the industry have already moved towards Challenge 25. We think as an industry we are ready to move
to Challenge 25 because enough 21 and 22 year olds have ID cards now that we
can move there. The big project and the
big work that we have been doing over the last two years is a project called
Community Alcohol Partnerships which was trialed in a little place called St
Neots in Cambridgeshire where we had some really dramatic impacts by working
with local enforcement, local police, trading standards, local health and local
education and the parents of the community.
It is not just about stopping selling to those under age, it is about
tackling under-age drinking, why young people want to drink, where they drink
and how you tackle that. The results
were very, very impressive, more than we could ever have hoped for. It is now seen as a model of best
practice. It has been rolled out to Q170 Chairman: Jeremy, in your submission you concentrated specifically on the attitude taken by local authorities and what you describe as the "excessive burdens" being imposed by some authorities. Where do you think the problem lies? Is it the guidance from DCMS which is insufficient or is it that local authorities are exceeding their powers? Mr Lowman: There are elements of both. The majority of local authorities we do not have any issues with and some provide really first class examples. The work that they have done in Cardiff city with the Millennium stadium there has been absolutely superb in terms of how they have built relationships with licensed premises. In some ways I think the guidance is not clear on some issues and some of it is enthusiastic licensing officers sometimes coming up with what they think are good ideas, but actually they provide problems on a local basis and some of it is just how they interpret the guidance. In terms of strengthening the guidance, I think we would like DCMS to look at whether there are some things that could be ruled out as not really appropriate, including requests for wiring maps as part of the licence application or things under the Food Safety Act and things like that. The problem with including that stuff is it is covered in other regulations already, but also if you include it in a licence application and someone has a problem with something that has gone past its sell-by-date then theoretically they could lose their licence for it. That is not what the licence was for in the first place. Certainly we have seen some quite enthusiastic police forces come up with some ideas that on the surface look quite good but when you delve into them they do not necessarily present solutions. Q171 Chairman: On the other hand, the convenience stores have argued particularly about the fee structure and the cost of this. You will be aware that as a result of the Elton review fees may have to increase further in order to cover fully local authority costs. What is your reaction to that? Mr Lowman: A number of councils are working within the current fee levels and are able to deliver the services they need to deliver on that basis. I think we should be looking at what they are doing and trying to roll that out as best practice. I do not accept that there is necessarily a need for an increase in fees. From our point of view, we already bear a huge proportional part of the fee increases put into the most recent Act. I think any change in fees needs to be more proportionate and needs to have a steeper grading in terms of which fees are applicable for different sizes of premises and different types of premises. There has been mention today about some of the costs associated with applications. There are other things that can be done to reduce the costs, things like changing advertising requirements for local papers and the fact that currently an applicant has to copy their application to seven different agencies. These things are not best regulation, they are not efficient and we should look at some of the reasons why the costs might be as high as they are, both costs borne by the applicant and obviously each of those seven agencies having to process that application. Q172 Chairman: Can I just explore with you a couple of these costs which you have identified in your submission? Let us look at lawyer costs. How often does an applicant require professional legal advice? Mr Lowman: Almost all new applications are done with legal advice. This is one of the things that has failed to transpire with the new Act. Under the old Act it was £30 for three years, it was less expensive in terms of the statutory costs, but the people getting a licence were having to go to the magistrates' court and so they felt they should have a lawyer present with them. There was a sense that moving to a local authority administered scheme would allow people to cut out those legal costs. The reality of just how important an alcohol licence is to people, the conditions and the approaches to alcohol licence applications that some local authorities have adopted - and there are many excellent local authorities - have made a lot of applicants very cautious about their application and they clearly want that legal support. Q173 Chairman: You also mentioned, in terms of the personal licence, a qualification fee of £150. What exactly is that? Mr Lowman: That would be for obtaining a BII qualification. We are in favour of staff being trained and certainly personal licence holders being trained to BII standards, but that cost is borne as part of a new application. Q174 Chairman: Presumably it always was the case that you would encourage --- Mr Lowman: No, it was not. Previously you had to be judged to be a fit and proper person. There is a case for saying that training is a more objective way of judging that than the previous test, but that was not required under the previous Act. Q175 Chairman: In terms of relieving the burden, as was indicated earlier, not only do most people say they do not particularly want to have a completely new Licensing Act, I think it is unrealistic to suggest the Government is going to have to make major legislative changes. What would you like to see changed that can be done perhaps through guidance to help your members? Mr Lowman: Guidance is the answer. We are not pushing for a new Licensing Act for the reasons you have stated. I think we need guidance which focuses on a number of points. Firstly, the evidence base around conditions being placed on licences, not just the evidence base of things happening in that area or things happening at that premises, but the cause and effects of conditions, ie how will that particular condition improve issues around alcohol harm, under-age drinking, whatever issue is identified in that area that is in line with licensable objectives. What is the cause and effect between conditions and outcomes there? We need to refocus case-by-case. Jeremy has mentioned some examples of local authorities perhaps pushing at the edges of their powers under the Act. One of the very important parts of the Act is that conditions have been placed on licences on a case-by-case basis. If one store in a town has certain problems it does not mean to say that all the stores in towns have the same problems and should be treated in the same way. Too often now we are hearing of examples where local authorities are trying to place standard conditions across all types of premises, ie all shops in an area and that is absolutely against the Act. If that proposal to impose that condition had gone in front of the magistrates' court it is highly unlikely it would get through judicial standards of evidence and cause and effect. It is a very small minority of local authorities who are not interpreting the Act as we think appropriate. We need to make sure that they are only bringing in conditions when the evidence is up to that standard. Just because we are not using the magistrates' court anymore does not mean that the evidence base which affects these people's businesses should be diminished. Mr Beadles: I would like to add a real
life example to that one because it brings into play a lot of what James was
talking about, which is that in Ealing recently local police and local trading
standards tried to apply a blanket condition across all shops prohibiting the
sale of any beer or cider over five and a half degrees. That might seem like an entirely reasonable
condition if what you are seeking to do is to stop shops in a particular area
selling strong beer/cider to homeless people.
If that is what the aim is it can be seen as an entirely realistic
condition, but applying it blankly across a whole range of shops actually means
that you are requiring them to take off the market most of our premium ciders
and beers. Most premium ciders in the Q176 Chairman: How do you address that? Mr Beadles: It is to do with the guidance but also looking at it on a shop-by-shop basis. If there is a shop that has a serious problem with homelessness and drinkers around the shop area, they are more than happy to have a conversation with the local licensing authority about the rules. They may not have a problem with that at all, but they will probably not want their premium products to go as a result and they would not necessarily want to see it as a blanket condition across everywhere. We represent everyone from very big to very small and very specialist businesses. We would not want to see that kind of condition applying to specialist businesses that make their living through selling these products. Chairman: I am sorry but we are going to have to stop there. We were slightly delayed in starting the final session. Thank you both very much for coming. |