Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1060
- 1079)
THURSDAY 29 JANUARY 2004
CLLR RICHARD
GRANT, CLLR
CAROLINE SEYMOUR
AND CLLR
GRAHAM BROWN
Q1060 Viscount Falkland: So I take that
answer then that you do not see much consumer demand for this?
Cllr Seymour: I have not had anybody
beating at my door yet asking me to support casinos, but I think
you just have to wait for a reaction. I do not think people are
very against it. I think when you talk to people, I think they
are quite happy to allow for more gambling across the community.
Cllr Grant: It is within the context
as well. You asked me a direct question about Warwickshire, but
the fuller answer would be that it would be in the context of
all the economic and social regeneration issues that were being
considered by the Council and I think that is the contextual answer
to your question. Like Caroline, nobody is beating at my door,
but I think we would be viewing the potential to regenerate the
areas along with other services to see that gambling may well
fit in in the context of the regeneration of an area which is
designed around leisure and tourism and the hotel industry and
those sorts of activities where, alongside the necessary skills
and upskilling, local people would be able to access jobs. It
would be much more of a package that you would look at to see
whether that would fit in. I do not think we would say that we
want to view gambling as one particular issue out of the context
of anything else that was going on.
Q1061 Lord Mancroft: Could I just push
a little bit further on that, and you may say this is rather unfair,
but it is hypothetical. If you put the idea that it should be
in the context of other leisure activities, and I do not know
Warwickshire that well, but the most obvious leisure activity
is the theatre in Stratford, so if you had an application for
a 10,000 square foot casino in Stratford, how would that be viewed
by the local community, do you think?
Cllr Grant: How do you think that
would be viewed!
Q1062 Lord Mancroft: I do not think they
would be wild about it, but I do not know, I do not live in Stratford.
Cllr Grant: I think it would be
an interesting proposal.
Q1063 Chairman: It would be up to you
and your colleagues to reach a decision. My question to you really
was that you seem to be relying on the reason not to have binding
guidance or virtually binding guidance on the basis that you will
set the policies for your area and those policies then have to
be implemented, but Cllr Brown is basically saying that the Bill
gives a presumption in favour of certain developments, so I think
you are going to find that there is going to be quite a tension
between those two schools of thought as this Bill unravels.
Cllr Seymour: I am sure that is
probably right. I feel I am getting a bit confused between whether
we are talking about actually granting the licence or whether
we are talking about the wider concept of planning, for example,
where obviously the planning system is going to be altered because
we are going to have the regional plans. They are going, for example,
to put in context where you might have a large leisure development
and I can certainly see in my area, for example, the coastal area
around Scarborough, that probably they would welcome having a
big casino in areas like that because there is real potential
to regenerate an area like that with a large casino. That is what
I thought we were trying to say, that it may not be welcome in
Stratford, but it would be welcome in other places.
Chairman: It is reported that Scarborough
Borough Council has recently granted a number of planning consents
and we will actually come on to planning a little later.
Q1064 Lord Wade of Chorlton: Were you
aware of the demand for supermarkets?
Cllr Seymour: Yes.
Cllr Brown: Yes, I would have
thought so. I was thinking about this question, relating it to
my area, and whether there is a demand. I do not think you can
answer whether there is a demand because it has never been an
option and there has never been anything available locally, but
I think with supermarkets, the general population could see what
benefits or otherwise were available to other areas.
Q1065 Lord Wade of Chorlton: Other areas
which had already got them?
Cllr Brown: Yes.
Cllr Grant: I think that the answer
or one of the answers to that is that a local council will be
looking at the needs of the local community and, in the context
of supermarkets, it would be a wide range of goods readily available
at reasonable prices, and if the supermarket offered that to the
community, then that would be something that local government
would be looking at to provide in that area and would measure
up against that set of policies as opposed to saying, "Let's
have a supermarket because it is good", per se.
Chairman: You are tending to suggest
that potentially the development of a casino would be offering
a wide range of gambling opportunities also at reasonable prices!
Q1066 Lord Wade of Chorlton: You describe
the licensing objectives as being limited and you say that they
restrict local authorities' ability to deal proactively with public
safety or nuisance problems. In the light of that, how would you
change the licensing objectives?
Cllr Grant: There is quite a lot
of legislation around, as you know, but we feel that the existing
legislation is insufficient to deal with the noise and nuisance
in the street outside premises and that a new licensing objective
of prevention of public nuisance should be added to clause 1 of
the Bill. We think that is something that needs to be added. The
other thing is that in terms of health and safety, the current
legislation does not cover aspects of health and safety in welfare
relating to members of the public, such as the provision of drinking
water and first aid arrangements and we feel that public safety
would be an addition to the licensing powers, and we see that
to add to the quality of the legislation and to enhance the provision
in terms of the public enjoyment of the facility.
Q1067 Lord Wade of Chorlton: Do you think
that the draft Bill is overly prescriptive and how would it impact
on your ability to deliver an efficient and effective service?
Cllr Seymour: Yes, we do see it
as being over-prescriptive. We think particularly that the presumption
in favour of granting an application rather limits the discretion
of councils and does not really allow or will not allow councils
actually to look at the local conditions and circumstances, so
that is particularly one area where we feel it is a bit over-prescriptive.
However, councils will have very little local discretion when
you consider that we are going to be subject, for example, to
the Gambling Commission codes of practice and guidance, the licensing
objectives and the local authority gambling statements, so, in
other words, there is going to be lots of guidance that we are
going to have to deal with which means that we are actually going
to be left with very little local discretion.
Q1068 Lord Wade of Chorlton: As a general
approach then to these matters, do you think it is right that
the general availability of casinos for those people who want
to gamble or any other gambling activity should be generally available
to those who want to do it broadly across the country or do you
think that each community should decide amongst themselves as
to what kind of services they offer, in which case of course the
local authority input would be very much greater? As a general
principle, how do you think the services provided by the local
authorities ought to be available, either to everybody, and that
is a prescriptive policy for the country, or how far do you think
they should be different from one community to another?
Cllr Grant: I think one answer
would be to say that local councils are in a position of balancing
the requirements, balancing the positive aspects and the potentially
negative aspects in each area, and I think you have to be careful
in that balance because in some areas you may be wanting to regenerate
an area not just to the economic requirements, but to the social
requirements, in terms of depravation and in order to upskill
an area and the skills of the people. You need to be very careful
that in balancing those, you do not get a conflict where you are
trying to tackle depravation issues, to upskill area and to then
not put in place activities that might be in conflict with that.
It would be possible, for example, just for example, in an area
where there was a level of depravation and people have not got
much money and there is a great deal of debt, to open up a number
of gambling opportunities in that area and that could be seen
as a conflict of interests between those two aims, and that is
one of the delicate balances that a local council would need to
take into account. However, as we have previously said, it needs
to be a balance between all those positives and interests within
the area and that is why sometimes local decisions are incredibly
difficult, particularly if you have got particular pressure groups
and that is where councils make those decisions, but, as we have
said, it is against the legislative framework which can be challenged
through the courts and challenged by government and it is in the
context of locally determined policies for an area and those agreed
with the partners as well.
Cllr Seymour: It is about having
the right facility in the right place and that is what local councils
are asking for, the ability actually to make sure that these activities
go on in the places that the community want them to. Every council
has as part of its local plan a leisure section and if the Gambling
Bill goes forward, then we would have to put in a policy about
gambling. Personally, I am quite comfortable with gambling and
so on, although there are other people who do not agree with gambling,
but councils are all the time balancing other interests in the
community and it is about judging each application on its merits
and whether it is the right place actually to put those facilities.
Cllr Brown: I think that there
seems to be an assumption that local authorities will look negatively
on any application and I think that is not the right starting
point. The Government is encouraging partnership working, and
we have got crime safety partnerships and so on. For an application
of a business to be effective from the business point of view
rather than from the community's point of view, consultation between
all these different partners and a conclusion at the end of it
as to what is the right answer is what will make a success for
everybody. I just want to curtail this assumption that local authorities
will be looking negatively on it; I think quite the opposite,
and in a great number of cases they will see it as an opportunity
for employment and regeneration and to revitalise communities.
Q1069 Baroness Golding: Could I come
back to my first point. Cllr Seymour said that you would be looking
at minimum standards when looking at licensing and then went on
about challenges in court. Surely the whole thing is to keep the
whole subject out of the courts if possible, so would it not be
better to have firm guidelines from the Gambling Commission so
that you could say, the local authorities could say, "We
have looked at this and we have been advised by our lawyers and
it must go to a higher level to look at these firm guidelines"?
Would that not be helpful to local authorities to have that?
Cllr Seymour: No, I think it does
make it very difficult for local councils actually to then serve
the interests of their local communities. I think if you have
very firm guidelines, it means that the community feels very shut
out of the decision-making and I think if you are in the end to
achieve a balance between serving the interests of the whole community
and, say, the immediate community, I think you have got to be
able to make the community feel that they actually had an impact
on the decision which has been made, and I think that is very
important so that afterwards you can live in harmony with whatever
decision has been taken.
Q1070 Lord Mancroft: You mentioned something,
I pricked my ears up, a few minutes ago about issues to do with
public safety and nuisance. Apart from the obvious thing of access
and motorcars late at night in residential areas, which applies
to buildings, I must admit I was not aware of public safety or
nuisance issues around casinos, so I wondered what you had in
mind.
Cllr Grant: I think here local
authorities and local communities would be concerned with the
issues that you mention along with people arriving, waiting for
friends, waiting for other people, perhaps arriving after they
have been to a public house or something like that or to a club,
perhaps potentially being noisy and those sorts of issues, and
also that it may be that the entrance may be an attraction as
just a general meeting place. I do not think that the local authorities
are in the position of saying, "This will be the problem",
but it is looking ahead and saying, "Look, here is something
that is coming along and we need to make sure that we have covered
all the possible sources of difficulty", so that we can address
those and so that this can operate smoothly for the good of the
business, for the good of the people that are attending the gambling
establishment and for the good of the local communities. It is
being good, looking ahead and being proactive about potential
problems.
Chairman: Well, we are going to ask you
about locations later.
Q1071 Mr Page: I noted very carefully
that Cllr Brown said that you cannot have a one-size- fits-all,
Cllr Grant said no rigid framework, and Cllr Seymour said rather
reluctantly that perhaps there should be some minimum standards.
Well, I have to point out delicately to all three of you that
perhaps legislation may have an overarching authority which may
go above and beyond your particular wishes, so bearing that in
mind, can I ask an omnibus question, which is how a national consistency
of licensing and planning can be achieved? Local authorities will
be dealing with a whole range of applications and I noticed in
your[sic] written evidence that you put it very delicately,
where you say, "The roles and responsibilities of local authorities
and regional development agencies need to be clarified to ensure
fairness and consistency of approach". How do you see that
working? How are you going to get national standards throughout
the country to be fair to the applicants?
Cllr Grant: I am concerned with
this issue of guidelines and that aspect you are talking about,
and I gave an answer which said that guidelines should be guidelines,
and I think it is about words. I think if you are calling something
"guidelines", it is a guide. I think if you actually
want to have something that sets minimum standards or some regulations,
that is what it ought to be called, so the basic quality protection
for the gambling experience and the consistency about that, I
think, should be part of the legislative framework and in there.
I think anything beyond that, if it is going to be guidance to
local authorities and guidance on good practice, it ought to be
guidance. I come back to the point I previously made which is
that the consistency will be measured up against the legislation
which is laid down, but the consistency will be that decisions
will be made and judged against the locally agreed local plans
where all the partners in the community, not just the local people,
but local businesses and other local statutory bodies have an
input to that policy so that there is a consistency there and
democratic decisions are made against those measures.
Cllr Seymour: I think that, as
we have said, we all have our local plans and so on and these
take a long, long time to develop and they go through many processes
which are open to the public and other interests to come in and
make their interests known. At the end of the day, we come up
with a plan. We have many plans across local authorities and they
all have to interrelate and work together, so that is how you
get your local consistency, because all of your plans should interrelate
and have a consistent view at the end.
Q1072 Mr Page: Can I follow that on and
ask you perhaps to elaborate a little bit as to how you can actually
see yourselves working with these regional planning bodies and
regional development agencies and how they can relate throughout
the country? You are arguing that they each should have their
local plan, so different regions could have a different approach
to this Bill.
Cllr Seymour: First of all, can
I preface whatever I say or what any of us say by saying that
Susie Kemp was going to be here to represent the Planning Executive
and she is obviously much better briefed and understands the planning
regulations much better than any of us.
Q1073 Chairman: Well, maybe you can deal
with some of that in a written response.
Cllr Seymour: Yes, I think that
is right. I was just going to say that it would probably be better
and it would give a more authoritative view if you actually had
written guidance, but, as I understand it, each region is going
to have to develop its own plan and I do not honestly know personally
how those will then fit together.
Cllr Brown: I think the Government
has recently brought forward proposals to require the regional
planning boards to seek advice from county councils. I know in
Wales that the Welsh Assembly has sent out its spatial plan and
asked for comments from the county councils.
Q1074 Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: Mr
Page asked a question and the evidence he was quoting was from
the operators of adult gaming centres and I have a faint impression
that he thought it was evidence submitted by the local authorities
themselves. To take Cllr Seymour's recent answer to Mr Page, I
had the impression that he was talking about national consistency
rather than local consistency because a lot of the organisations
which will in fact be making applications will be making applications
all over the country.
Cllr Seymour: Yes, that is right.
Q1075 Chairman: The questions we are
asking are about the licensing process and the answers you are
giving seem to me to be as much about the planning decisions as
the licensing decisions. We have raised this in the Committee
as to which comes first, but are you not going to be confronted
as local authorities with a view that people think, "We don't
want this in our area. Therefore, planning should be refused",
but the premises which exist may already have the relevant class
use, and a D2 class use would be the use for a casino, so how
are you going to cope with that? I appreciate that Cllr Kemp is
not here, but how are going to cope with that?
Cllr Seymour: Well, it can happen
to a degree now in that, for example, a pub might ask for an entertainment
licence which then allows different activities than just drinking
taking place, so we already have that situation, but certainly
in my Authority an application, say, for an entertainment licence
is looked at against the criteria for granting an entertainment
licence, and the planning permission, which, as you say, is already
granted, is already granted, so you cannot do anything about it
and you are just looking at it in terms of granting an entertainment
licence. I would see it in those terms with regard to gambling,
that it would be exactly the same, that you would have to look
at the criteria for the premises, and I think that is why it is
very important that we do get this local flexibility and also
that additional statement about the nuisance aspect of any new
development.
Cllr Brown: I can foresee a problem
here in that if local authorities are not allowed to take on board
local factors when considering a licence to be granted, other
sectors may feel that the gambling sector is perhaps having special
treatment. If somebody wants to open up a public house, they have
to get planning permission, but they also have to obtain a licence
and various factors are taken into account when considering that.
Unless someone can tell me otherwise, I cannot see why local authorities
should not be taking into account exactly the same factors for
the gambling industry as they do for other businesses.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: Speaking
as a veteran of the committee stage of the Licensing Bill in the
House of Lords, the local authorities were arguing exactly the
same argument against the Licensing Bill, that the guidance which
the Government were issuing and the framework within which they
had to set the licensing objectives were extremely prescriptive.
I said on a previous occasion that I am under no obligation to
be supportive of the Government, but it does seem to me that they
are being consistent in the approach they are using in this Bill
to the approach they used in the Licensing Bill and gambling is
not being treated as a special case.
Mr Page: I would just thank Lord Brooke
for pointing out that I quoted the evidence from a completely
different organisation, which actually phrased the same thing,
though much more delicately than the Local Government Association,
when they said that the proposals might set up a worrying framework
which the councils and local residents could veto at the regional
level, so I do hope that Cllr Kemp, when she produces the written
evidence, could elaborate a bit more on that and how that can
be eliminated and how it might be understood to work in practice.
Q1076 Lord Faulkner of Worcester: I would
like to ask a bit more about the practice which should be taken
into consideration when considering applications for premises
licences, and particularly the question of consumer demand. We
have heard a lot of evidence from a number of organisations, particularly
from the Methodist Church and I quote from what they say, that,
"Local authorities should be able to turn down a premises
licence application if there is already judged to be an excessive
density of gambling opportunities". Do you agree with that?
Cllr Brown: The fact is that what
will be taken into consideration on a gambling licence application
would be the same as on basically any other application in that
we must take into consideration the type of premises, the capacity,
the activity offered, opening hours, proximity of sensitive premises,
track record, management and so on, and there are high-level issues
around local plans in relation to crime, disorder, planning, tourism,
regeneration, social inclusion, transport, parking and so on.
Those are the factors that we need to take into account. With
regard to density, again that comes down to the local development
plans, the suitability of communities, et cetera. It is almost
as if each case would need to be taken on its own merits.
Cllr Seymour: It is not up to
local councillors actually to dictate market forces obviously,
but we would like to suggest that perhaps cumulative impact would
be a useful factor to be considered rather than actually the density
of the premises or consumer demand, looking at the actual potential
impact on an area of another gambling establishment rather than
just saying that it is market forces and it must be allowed to
go ahead because they want to do it, and here cumulative impact
obviously varies according to the area.
Q1077 Lord Faulkner of Worcester: But
you presumably would have a view if somebody wanted to open a
casino next to a school or even a youth centre?
Cllr Seymour: Yes, that is right
and I think that those are exactly the considerations one has
to hopefully take into account when looking at these applications.
Q1078 Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: Cumulative
impact and proliferation were not in the original draft of the
Licensing Bill and those conditions were imposed by the House
of Lords during the committee stage, so I am bound to say that
I wholly agree with Cllr Seymour in what she has just said.
Cllr Grant: I think the other
thing is that a local council would be looking at the cumulative
impact, so if you have got five casinos and there was an application
to build a sixth of exactly the same, would that actually provide
a range of leisure opportunities for people coming into the area?
Would that actually add to the leisure provision or would it just
dilute it and actually not make any improvement at all? I think
that sort of cumulative impact would be important as well.
Q1079 Lord Faulkner of Worcester: Are
you not getting close to or going back to applying a demand test
in that case? If the Government is saying that the legislation
should adopt a free-market approach, and a sixth or seventh casino
in a town failed, then they would probably take the view that
if one or two failed, that is what the market determined.
Cllr Seymour: But we are not just
talking about casinos though, are we? We are talking about other
things and potentially those actually have a greater effect on
an area, for example, adult gaming centres or something like that.
Again, councils nowadays do have a lot of policies and they do
a lot of listening to what the local community wants. In small
places, more than one adult gaming centre could have a very detrimental
effect on the local community. It is therefore important that
this cumulative impact idea comes in. You are going to get evidence
from Blackpool where obviously there is a big leisure industry
and it is a different scale so it has a different effect.
Cllr Grant: That neatly illustrates
the balance of judgment that local councillors have to make in
their decision making. Does the additional casino add to the variety
that is on offer or will it test the market and sort out the weak
ones? Is it measured against the regeneration and the development
of the area? That is one of those difficult balances that we are
faced with. There will be one set of arguments supporting that
you increase the number of casinos, another saying that if you
do that several will fail and another set of arguments saying
that if you want to encourage more people to come in and use the
existing casinos you need to develop other sorts of facilities
that will support them. It is the balance of those arguments that
we all have to make difficult decisions about.
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