Licences still not issued one year later

Licensing in local authorities is often describ-ed as "the Cinderella subject" - not a mainstream activity and, therefore, not always a priority when it comes to financing or support.

But if you remember the story, Cinderella had to be home by midnight, or she would lose everything. Tomorrow is midnight for local councils.

It will then be a year since the Licensing Act 2003 came into full effect. Councils were given from 6 August 2005, when they received their last application, until 24 November 2005 to issue the new-style premises licences, so that everyone would have them to display when the new system started.

That was clearly pie in the sky. Councils too numerous to mention have failed to meet November 2005 deadline. Or the New Year. Or six months. Even the Scrutiny Councils, who were meant to epitomise best practice, admitted that they would not complete the job until "the summer".

Now we are a full year on, and the deafening silence from the Local Government Association and the Department for Culture Media & Sport, not to mention LACORS, suggests to me that Cinderella will go home in rags and that the licensed trade in England and Wales is still waiting for the full complement of licence documents.

Yet last December, Councillor Geoffrey Theobalds was berating me in print for daring to suggest that there were still "thousands" of licences outstanding (which there were). He maintained that the whole exercise had been an unqualified success. Well, I suppose that if you say it often enough you will believe it. But the licensed trade knows better.

The real issue here is: how can you trust a licensing authority that cannot even get the basics right, or on time? What confidence can you have that all the other elements are properly in place; that officials and clerks are properly trained, or understand the law? Or that the licence you eventually get truly reflects what you applied for in the first place?

Have we such dim memories? Granted, there were delays with some licensing divisions under the old system, but not to this extent. There were professional clerks with a sense of duty. Can you remember a transfer or a new licence taking a year to be issued? Of course not.

In any case, it is rank inefficiency. But it points to one important aspect of this legal change - councils are a law unto themselves.

There is absolutely no "accountability", which was the cornerstone of what the Government claimed the new system would provide. Who is being asked to account for the delays, or the inaccuracies? No-one, because they have no-one to answer to.

It would be helpful if one or two MPs took up the cudgels and began to ask awkward questions of the Department for Culture Media & Sport at their regular despatch-box sessions. Then at least the issue would get a public airing. It might be helpful if those licensees who have experienced undue delays in dealing with their own licences contacted their MPs and told them the sorry tale.

So the deadline that I set LACORS executive director Derek Allen a few months ago is upon us. I eagerly anticipate a declaration that every single licence and certificate has now been issued in every single council in England and Wales that is covered by the Local Government Association and for which LACORS has supervisory responsibility. If that comes tomorrow, I will make a public apology in the next issue and withdraw my "unfounded" allegations. I will also buy Councillor Theobalds that drink I promised him - in a Brighton bar of his choice.

I rather think my money is safe.