Legal advice: When is due date?

Confusion reigns over accurate date for renewal of premises licences under the new licensing law.

By Niall McCann of thePublican.com's team of legal experts from London solicitors Jolson Wilson.​

While it feels as though the transitional process under the Licensing Act 2003 finished only yesterday, it is now a year since the first premises licences were granted and the time has come to shell out more money.

Under the Licensing Act 1964, we all knew what was going on. On-licences and the like were renewed en masse by April 4 every three years. You might recall that the fee was only £30.

Under the Licensing Act 2003, except under certain circumstances such as insolvency or the death of the holder, premises licences run indefinitely. However, as things currently stand, the regulations set an annual inspection fee which shall become due and payable each year, on the anniversary of the date of the granting of the premises licence.

As with the initial application for a premises licence, the fee varies depending on the rateable value of the premises and a table can be found in a schedule to the regulations.

As the fee becomes due on the anniversary of the premises licence, those who were efficient and applied early on and had their premises licence granted early, will be penalised as their annual fee will become due sooner than those premises licences granted at the time of the deadline.

This arrangement also causes difficulties as you first have to establish when your premises licence was actually granted. This is not as easy as it would seem. I have seen numerous premises licences which are undated.

Furthermore, some premises licences have yet to be issued and of those that were issued, many were incorrect. In these cases, the date of issue of the licence is unclear.

These flaws have obviously been brought to the attention of the licensing minister, James Purnell, who has stated that in the medium term the government is working to fix a single date for the payment of the annual fee.

In the meantime, I would suggest that you speak to your local authority to ascertain their approach. Certainly LACORS, the body which co-ordinates regulatory services for local authorities, has recommended to licensing authorities that they use the anniversary date system for now.