Now is time to nip the

nit-pickers in the bud

The thing about regime change is that you start to get nostalgic about the former system, with all its faults.

No, I am not getting political, today of all days, but I have been intrigued by the pleasant recollections of the way clerks handle licensing applications which have adorned both the letters page and my own postbag.

The main lament is that local authorities are much more rigid than the licensing justices when it comes to handling applications. The complaint is that the slightest error or lack of an item seems to invalidate the whole application, so it is sent back for re-submission.

I admit that this is clearly happening in a number of areas, and it is a disaster for the transition process. While pleading for communication from the licensed trade, town halls are themselves failing to communicate with applicants who might have got things slightly wrong ­ which is hardly surprising, given the complexity of this application system.

As an example, if one is making a licence application under the existing system, you send a single A4 sheet of paper to the clerk, and to other "responsible authorities", stating at whichsessions you intend to apply. You then provide certain other items concerning the premises and the applicants, together with the fee, either at the same time, or a little later. What the clerk does is to check the application to see what is missing (perhaps the fitness of applicant forms, or the requisite number of plans of the premises) and then sends an acknowledgement with the missing items listed.

The application is not rejected. When all the items are present, it is heard by the justices. If you fail to comply, you miss your opportunity, and the hearing is either adjourned or you must withdraw the application and start again.

What they do not do is to reject your application entirely at the first attempt, simply because one thing is missing, or is at fault. They take the pragmatic view ­ one which I have urged on local authorities in all this sorry business.

Why not allow an application to be amended? Why make someone who may not be at all comfortable with this technically complex process start all over again, humiliating them at the same time by suggesting they are incompetent?

I suggest that local authorities are making a rod for their own backs by being too authoritarian during the transition process. What many of them seem to have ignored is that those who are applying already have the right to trade ­ they do not have to re-establish that right by being made to jump through hoops set at different heights.

It would seem that some councils are effectively asking existing licensees to prove their worth all over again, and at the same time complete a bureaucratic obstacle course in which only the applicant can be the loser.

This is where the local government bosses can step in to help. They should be monitoring these nit-picking authorities and giving them advice on how to ease the situation rather than making it worse by rejecting applications outright. From what I have heard, a very high percentage of applications are being rejected at the outset, rather than active discussions taking place. This is particularly hard on those who have booked expensive advertising space in newspapers, only to find that it is wasted and they have to start all over again.

The cost to the industry in time and effort is enormous ­ even for putting together a perfectly straightforward application. It is no wonder to me that many thousands of licensees are reluctant to start, and fearful of the result.