Smoking ban guidance worry for pubs

Government will not release any more guidance to clarify whether pub smoking shelters comply with the smoking ban rules.

Department of Health officials have said the follow-up guidance will only refer to signage - and the guide from local government co-ordinator LACORS will also lack specific measurements for shelters.

You can bet your life that what one council will argue - another won't​Paul Wigham, boss of Bar Group.

This will anger licensees and operators who are confused about whether their proposed shelters will comply with the ban.

It also makes it more likely that licensees will face a "postcode lottery" over how the rules on smoking shelters are interpreted.

Crown Awnings managing director Tony Holman was told in a meeting with Andrew Black, of the Smokefree legislation team at the Depart-ment of Health, that the new guidance would not cover key issues about shelters.

These include whether a covered courtyard is classed as a substantially enclosed place and how far a roof can be from the wall of a shelter.

Only details on signage requirements will be included in the guidance, which is due in the next few weeks.

"There will be no planning guidance whatsoever," said Holman.

LACORS will also not offer clear-cut dimensions in guidance for local authorities.

"It will not go as far as to stipulate measurements of roofs to walls or shelters to other walls," said a LACORS spokesman.

"It will be up to the individual officers to use their judgement."

Graeme Cushion, of law firm Poppleston Allen, said forthcoming guidance from Government will not state how close a roof needs to be to a wall for that wall to be considered part of the structure.

He said: "In Ireland the guidance was 50mm and in Scotland 500mm. In England and Wales, it will be left to common sense. The message coming through from the Department of Health is that anything which is within the spirit of the legislation will be acceptable and anything which is not will not."

Paul Wigham, boss of Bar Group, which operates 32 sites in south east England, recently contacted several councils to find out whether shelters on courtyards would comply with the rules.

"They were absolutely clueless," he said. "We don't know what to do in these sites. We are sitting here waiting because we were told there would be more guidance. It's ludicrous."

He added: "You can bet your life that what one council will argue [complies with the rules] another won't."

The BII's director of membership Steve Howe said: "There's no doubt that additional guidance on smoking shelters would be welcome."

He said a key area where clarification was needed concerns the distance that shelters can be situated from walls - and he feared an "inconsistent" approach from councils.