Legal advice: Procedures for obtaining licences
By Keith Miller of thePublican.com's team of legal experts from London solicitors Joelson Wilson.
Draft regulations setting out procedures for obtaining licences under the new Licensing Act have now been published. We will be highlighting issues thrown up by the regulations in a series of articles over the coming weeks.
This week we look at personal licences.
To qualify for a personal licence an individual must be aged 18 or over, possess a recognised qualification (unless applying to convert an existing justices licence) and be in a position to show the licensing authority that he has not been convicted of certain "relevant offences" or "foreign offences" as defined by the Act.
The only grounds for objection to a personal licence can be raised is where granting the licence would undermine the prevention of crime and disorder objective - and then only by the police.
In order to prove that an applicant for a personal licence (except where converting an existing licence) has not committed a relevant offence, a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) basic disclosure must be obtained. The specimen application forms state that an up-to-date basic disclosure must be enclosed with the application.
As yet, such a disclosure does not exist. Having raised this matter with the CRB, I have been advised that the basic disclosure may not even exist by the time of the first appointed day on February 7, 2005. As a result, it is not yet clear how much the disclosure will cost, or how long it will take to obtain.
