Licensing mess

I run a pub which was recently sold by a major pub company as part of an Office of Fair Trading ruling. This pub company had offered to take full responsibility for completing and registering our new premises licence application. Having been sold to a smaller yet rapidly expanding pub company in March 2005 we were informed by the former that any agreements given to us by them would be upheld by the incoming landlord. Following 3 meetings with 2 new BDM's which all contained enquiries by us about the licensing situation, we were informed that they were awaiting information from the outgoing landlord about our application's progress. On June 8th 2005 we received a letter from the new landlord which outlined the costs of an application, the site plans and the charges made by their agents for completing any forms on our behalf should we choose. The obvious implication for us was that the agreement had changed and this was confirmed in 2 subsequent phone calls on the 8th June to our new BDM.

As a result of this late notification in the change of agreement, we were advised by our local authority not to apply for a variation for the risk errors would be found and it returned, the consequence of which would be to miss the August 6th deadline for conversion applications. We are now having to apply for TEN's in the run up to Christmas in order to make the most of this lucrative time of year and to re-apply in the new year for our variation. The extra cost of this will be in the region of £200. Can you please advise us as to what liability for these extra costs either pub company may have as we feel the choice was taken out of our hands by not being told earlier what the new situation would be. Hanna Rees-Jones