DCMS piles up the paperwork

Predictably, the proposed new temporary event notice form from the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) runs to no less than ten pages five for the actual notice and five pages of explanatory notes!

This is, of course, the Brave New World of simplified licensing: sweeping away the old, complicated system in this case, occasional licences and occasional permissions. Well, occasional licences consisted of one brief A4 sheet, could be sent by post if a month ahead of the date and cost £10. Occasional permissions might require a brief visit to the licensing sessions. They were always taken first, so you did not have to wait and they cost £10 too.

The new one requires duplicate copies of the application, can only be used 12 times for the same premises and costs just over 100% more at £21. Some progress!

There is, somewhere in the DCMS, a completely distorted view as to what constitutes simplicity. There is no-one anywhere in licensing who thinks that the elements of this new licensing system represent a clean-up operation. They think that the burden has been moved almost entirely onto the applicant to comply with a complex set of rules at every turn, in an industry which does not necessarily possess the skills or expertise to do so. No advantage is gained for anyone in making the bureaucratic level so high. But it seems that no stone must be left unturned in ensuring that everyone who makes an application has declared every last thing they can on these long forms.

So the temporary event notice wades its muddy way through past applications, whether any business colleagues have applied before and so on, creating in the mind of the licensee or other responsible person the feeling that they are being put on trial by the form.

The policy is: make them prove themselves and sign a declaration that they have told the truth. Then everything will be OK.

It is an extremely sorry way to run a licensing system. It revolves round paperwork, notices, timing and extra fees. It means extended time for everyone in filling in sheets of paper and checking pages of script. It is not efficient, yet it seems no-one even in Government is prepared to challenge these wasteful procedures.

And if I hear once again from Jowell or Purnell that the industry is going to save £2bn as a result, I shall do my nut!