Legal advice: Why variation on conversion is a waste of money

by Niall McGann of thePublican.com's legal team of experts from London solicitors Joelson Wilson.​

As well as gathering together original licences and certificates, finding plans and transferring licences in preparation for the introduction of the new Licensing Act, thoughts are turning to the possibility of modifying the rights that will automatically be granted on conversion.

With grandfather rights firmly established, in all but exceptional cases, you will retain the rights you currently have. So if you currently sell alcohol until 2am with the benefit of a special hours certificate, then you will be entitled to continue to sell alcohol until this time with your new premises licence. We are still waiting for the government to clarify whether the requirements of a special hours certificate will be incorporated as conditions on your premises licence. You may well have to continue providing a dancefloor, substantial food and so on.

What happens if you want to be released from conditions on your licence on conversion? For example, you may have an undesirable condition on your licence requiring alcohol only to be served to persons seated at tables, or imposing a last entry time. At the same time as applying for conversion it is possible to apply to vary the licence, to remove some or all of these conditions.

You could, for example, apply to extend the permitted hours for the sale of alcohol or the provision of music.

Alternatively, you may want to provide a form of "regulated entertainment" such as live music.

There is only one major problem with applying for variation on conversion. The act states that if a variation application has not been processed by a licensing authority within two months of submission, then it is deemed to be refused.

The trouble with that is licensing authorities, straining under the weight of converting licences alone, are unlikely to have time to deal with any variation applications within that timescale. Therefore your application would be refused.

You may be lucky and your authority may be very efficient, but don't be too confident that many variation applications submitted on conversion will be granted.

While we don't yet know the fee for submitting a variation application, applicants may end up throwing money down the drain if they apply for variation at the time of conversion.