Safety in numbers?
Licensing practitioners all over the country have been very busy in recent weeks ensuring that the licences that their clients hold are in apple-pie order for the first appointed day next February.
One court licensing officer has told me that for their next transfer sessions they have 200 applications listed for consideration under the Licensing Act 1964. It is possibly a measure of the comparative efficiency of the current system that they will get through them all, one way or another, during a single day.
But there is one aspect of the forthcoming switch that puzzles me. How many names do you need on a licence?
In many areas of the country, it is the police who suggest that they expect to see more than one person named on the licence application for all but the smallest premises. If there are insufficient names put forward, they indicate that they would expect an undertaking to be given to join one or even two extra licensees at the next available sessions.
When this is discussed, the police view is that one person cannot take full responsibility for the premises in question and it is essential that others in a position of responsibility take on a licensed status, so that the overall control of the premises can be shared out.
Yes, that's right. More than one. So what will be the position after next November?
Well, you will have one person named on the licence. That's all. The designated premises supervisor. Nobody else who works on those premises will be named or identified as having responsibility for what goes on there. Even if the designated premises supervisor is not present, that is the person to whom the police or the local authority must have re-course if something goes wrong.
But am I not forgetting something? The Act says that all sales of alcohol must be "made or authorised" by a person who holds a personal licence. Does that not mean that at all times there must be the holder of a personal licence present on the premises and supervising sales?
No it does not. It means exactly the same as the current law. Under the 1964 Act, all sales are either made or authorised by the holder of the justices' licence, whether he or she is present or not.
Nothing in the 2003 Act specifically states that a personal licence holder must be present on the premises at all times. The authority to sell can be delegated, just as it is now, when the licensee goes on holiday, or pops out for the day to a BII meeting.
Delegating your authority does not absolve you from blame, of course. If something goes wrong, you can still be prosecuted. Then it is up to you to prove that you exercised "due diligence" to prevent the offence.
That defence will still be available to the designated premises supervisor, who certainly will not be on the premises all the time that they are open for business, especially if a variation has been sought to extend the hours.
But it seems to me that there will be considerable pressure put upon the operators of larger licensed premises to ensure that the holder of a personal licence is present at all times when alcohol is being sold.
I would not be surprised to see this emerge even as a condition on some classes of licence. Whether I think it is legal or not, I cannot see the police or certain local authorities being content with just one person with the authority of a licence having control of a major licensed outlet.
It isn't in the Act but, hey, why should that matter?
