No room for Big Brother

They say each one of us is caught on a CCTV camera about 300 times a day. But ask licensees about how they're being watched by local authorities and the police, and they'll say they're under a lot more scrutiny than that.

Almost everyone in the trade at the moment feels that life is being made more difficult for them by the new Licensing Act. Environmental officers, fire chiefs, council officials, councillors and policemen - all seem to be examining the pub far more than they ever did under the old licensing regime. And they all want to have their say about whatever aspect of the business catches their eye.

Uncomfortable though it is, this level of scrutiny is not going to go away. Pubs are very high-profile these days, and it's up to licensees to cope with that attention as best they can.

Licensees running well-organised, efficient businesses can cope with this attention. But many will need to get their act together a little better if they're not to fall foul of the swelling ranks of public sector snoopers and inspectors.

What's also worrying is that even the best licensees are feeling victimised, particularly by

over-zealous police officers. Take the question of call outs. One pub company is so fed-up with police logging procedures any time there's trouble that they're close to making it company policy not to call from the pub but nip outside instead with a mobile and pretend to be a member of the public who's just seen some trouble nearby. What an indictment of heavy-handed policing! Surely police forces can respond to pub incidents without marking down the pub that's requested help?

At an Association of Chief Police Officers seminar last week, the senior officers agreed that licensing issues must be treated as a more "mainstream" part of policing, and not left to specialist officers. If that means police understanding pubs better, good. But if it means even more clumsy interference, then we really do need to question their role in our trade. The sympathetic example set by Jan Brown and Steve Greenacre, the police officers who set up

Best Bar None and who we interview this week, should be followed by their colleagues.

The people behind Provence and LESG will no doubt try to get back into the industry again at some stage in the future. Let's just hope suppliers exercise far more caution next time round.