Legal advice: Dealing with anti-social behaviour

Related tags Anti-social behaviour Anti-social behaviour order

Licensees no longer have to tolerate bad behaviour but can use the courts to ban problem customers.By David Clifton of thePublican.com's team of...

Licensees no longer have to tolerate bad behaviour but can use the courts to ban problem customers.

By David Clifton of thePublican.com's team of legal experts from London solicitors Joelson Wilson.

The Prime Minister's office announced on August 31 that 2,400 anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) had been issued since they were introduced in 1999 and that 1,323 were issued in the year to March 2004. This represents a 50 per cent increase over the previous 12-month period.

Tony Blair was in Harlow on the same day, specifically calling for wider use of ASBOs. This was set against the background of a rise in the number of ASBOs taken out of 430 per cent in Leeds year-on-year, 232 per cent in Greater Manchester, 182 per cent in Camden and 139 per cent in Liverpool.

An ASBO could potentially be used to resolve problems of anti-social behaviour affecting your pub - for instance if particular individuals are regularly adopting a threatening attitude towards your staff, customers or door supervisors.

How the ASBOs system works

The police and local authorities have the right to apply to a magistrates court for an ASBO.

An ASBO could prevent the person named from entering designated areas around your pub but, more generally, can cover anything necessary to prevent anti-social behaviour.

ASBOs are valid for a minimum period of two years. If someone breaches the order, he will be liable on conviction to an unlimited fine (if convicted in the Crown Court) and a maximum of five years' imprisonment.

Although the police and local authority can act unilaterally they must consult each other before proceeding with an ASBO application. They must first be convinced that the person to whom an ASBO is directed has acted in an anti-social manner likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress to one or more people not living in the same household as himself. An ASBO can extend to adjoining areas so long as each council and police chief officer involved has been consulted prior to application.

Exclusion order

If customers are particularly problematic, it is also worth remembering that you can take out an exclusion order under the Licensed Premises (Exclusion of Certain Persons) Act 1980.

A court can make an exclusion order of between three months to two years on conviction of a person for an offence committed on licensed premises if the person resorted to violence or threatened to resort to violence. It prohibits that person from entering those premises (or any other licensed premises specified in the order) without the licensee's consent.

Breach of an exclusion order means that person is liable to a fine of up to £1,000 and can be imprisoned.

A licensee is under no legal obligation to sell a drink to anyone. In a case decided in 1877 the judge said that in a pub "no-one has a right to insist on being served, any more than in any other shop". Of course, that case took place way before the introduction of the sex, disablities, race and ethnic discrimination laws that apply today and this would need to be borne in mind.

Related topics Legislation

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