New details emerge of licensing reform plans

Licensing minister Kim Howells has approved a timetable for the introduction of licensing reform.

Following a series of high-level meetings in Westminster last week, Dr Howells has agreed that all pubs in England and Wales should be operating under the new regime from July 2004.

He also offered assurances that licensees will not need to reapply to keep their existing licence conditions - easing trade fears that licensing officials would be overwhelmed by applications and pubs would be forced to shut until the backlog was dealt with.

In what is the most detailed set of proposals unveiled yet, Dr Howells agreed that, after the bill receives royal assent, which is expected to happen in July 2003, licensees will have until January 2004 to register their existing licences and lodge applications for variations.

Licensing officials will then have a maximum of six months to process applications before a date is set in July 2004 for the new system to begin.

Last week's meetings followed mounting concern within the trade that some officials in government were backing plans to make licensees reapply for their licences.

This scenario was viewed as disastrous for the trade, with predictions that the sheer volume of applications for the new personal and premises licences, possibly up to 155,000, would have led to a repeat of the recent delays in vetting teachers.

Alistair Arkley, chairman of New Century Inns, said: "Any attempt to introduce dual licensing from day one was simply a recipe for disaster."

The British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) and other trade bodies involved in last week's meetings have welcomed the government's decision.

Mark Hastings, spokesman for the BBPA, said it was "a clear sign that talking to the government and working with them resulted in benefits to the whole of the sector".

"We have retained grand-father rights for all pubs to keep what they already have and we have also managed to set a very tight timetable for local authorities to agree the new hours," he added.

John McNamara, chief executive of the British Institute of Innkeeping also welcomed Dr Howells' plans but added that he remained concerned that there was not a long enough lead-in time to process the numbers of applications involved.

He said: "You would have to go from a standing start to fully operational in only a few months."

But the Local Government Association's John Tiffney said processing applications should be quite quick because most would not be opposed.

He added: "There will only be a minority that will come across problems."