Legal advice: No leeway over August 6

The government remains intransigent over the licence deadline, but will November 24 date be delayed?

By Niall McCann and Anna Mathias of thePublican.com's team of legal experts from London solicitors Joelson Wilson.​

I have just read the transcript in Hansard of the recent debate on the implementation of the Licensing Act 2003.

With the First Appointed Day only a matter of days away, MPs were clearly anxious about the practical effects of the failure by a very large number of licensees to do the necessary to ensure they will continue to be able to trade after November 24.

Serious concerns were raised about the effect the legislation will have on village halls, travelling circuses and the like. The complexity of the forms came in for a bashing, with one MP citing a constituent who, he said, had taken more than 200 hours to complete the process. Some would say that it appears unlikely that the Act itself took that long to draft!

Politicians love statistics and plenty were bandied around concerning the percentage of applications received at the time of the debate. Certainly in London it appeared that fewer than half those eligible had applied.

Opposition MPs concluded that a crisis was now unavoidable. Assuming all applications were submitted by the deadline of August 6, there was no guarantee that licensing authorities would have the manpower to deal with them. There had been talk of solicitors' firms setting up camp beds and licensing officers moving into hotels near their offices to allow further time to deal with the deluge.

It was simply not possible to postpone the August 6 deadline, as it was enshrined in the Act itself. To do so would have taken a protracted Parliamentary process - and at a time when MPs would be on holiday.

It remains, however, within the government's power to postpone the Second Appointed Day, currently fixed for November 24. This would allow licensees who have missed the boat to benefit from the option of applying under paragraph 11 of Schedule 8 to the Act for what would effectively be a new licence for a longer period.

This procedure has its pros and cons but at least it would enable licensees to avoid finding themselves without a licence come the Christmas period (not to mention that they would at least conserve the operating hours they enjoy at present).

Theresa May, shadow secretary for Culture, Media and Sport, used the debate to step up the pressure, asking the government whether a new deadline could be set to fall after the Christmas and New Year period. The answer came back a blunt "no".

Adrian Bailey, Labour/Co-operative MP for West Bromwich West, even went so far as to say: "Penalties accrue if people do not return their tax forms, but some fail to do so.

"If we put back the deadlines, the danger is that it will send the wrong messages to people."

He made no mention of the fact that the government's pushing back its own deadlines had contributed to this situation (remember the late hour at which the forms were published by the government and the shoddy way in which this was done?) not to mention that the fees regulations as originally signed off were so littered with mistakes that they had to be subsequently amended.

The government is digging its heels in. The order confirming the Second Appointed Day as November 24 has already been signed.

Apparently the same order will bring into force the necessary provisions to deal with AWPs and variation applications made before that date where a conversion application has already gone in.

At the moment licensees cannot apply outside a conversion application to vary the identity of the designated premises supervisor (DPS) - a concern given the fact that after November 24, any sale of alcohol will be illegal if the DPS is not correctly identified.

The government's insistence that the date will stand could have serious ramifications. Licensing authorities have reportedly not yet decided their approach to enforcement and the Association of Chief Police Officers also confessed that it hadn't given the question much thought.

Who knows, then, what will happen, but images of mass unemployment and riots on the streets spring to mind. It may well be that a blind eye will be turned. I say eat, drink and be merry, for it could be a very dry Christmas 2005.