Reining in of council tendencies

The success of the High Court challenge to Canterbury Council over its licensing policy will clearly have far-reaching im- plications, but whether it will be relevant to other authority areas in the next five weeks before the end of transition remains to be seen.

First of all, it will be difficult for individual licensees to gain specifically from the judge's views unless those have a direct impact on a point of issue between themselves and their local council.

As each operating schedule is unique to the applicant and is written with those premises specifically in mind, it is likely that the many thousands of applications that are beginning to be made now, will be processed in exactly the way they would have been before the judgement.

So while this is an important victory in principle, in practical terms it can only have a long-term effect on the way councils compose and amend their policies.

It certainly does not mean that applicants for conversion can ignore their own council's policy entirely, or can somehow have an easier ride over the next few weeks because one local authority has had an adverse judgement against it.

But, of course, the victory is important, in that it does show, even at this late stage, that there must be some reining in of the tendency of some local author-ities to write their own rule book.

The new Licensing Act has rules that must be followed, and the guidance from the secretary of state makes it clear that councils should not use the licensing system as an open invitation to cover matters more properly dealt with by other means or other legislation.

There is no doubt, too, that some councillors allow their own personal opinions to colour the way in which they deal with applications, rather than take an objective approach. After all, they are not trained as judges, not even as magistrates.

It is true that they do have an organisation to help and advise them on the correct way to proceed, not only in terms of what they publish the policies but also how they go about taking decisions at hearings. But critics of the new system say that this will not stop them from going their own way if they do not like a particular application.

As for the idea that licensing authorities have no power to influence a licensing decision and must wait for other parties to intervene I just wonder how that will work out in practice.