Pubs told to speed up smoke planning

Councils are urging licensees in England to submit plans for smoking shelters as soon as possible, after reporting that only a trickle of applications are arriving.

Hosts risk running out of time if they want planning permission to put up a shelter for when the 1 July smoking ban begins.

Councils are supposed to deal with applications within eight weeks, but some authorities say the process can take longer - and there is now less than 10 weeks to go before the big stub-out.

A snap survey of 10 councils by the MA revealed that very few applications for smoking shelters have been submitted in recent weeks.

Westminster City Council has had no applications for shelters at all from pubs.

Planning officers at the London council suggested several reasons for the sluggish response. Businesses may wait until after summer when there is more need for a shelter, they argued, or they may simply be prepared to lose smoking customers.

A spokeswoman for Camden Council said: "We've had around 20 to 30 applications for canopies. We have a total of 1,400 licensed premises so it's not a huge number."

A spokeswoman for Bristol City Council said around eight applications have been received. "We are not exactly inundated with applications," she said. "Any that have been submitted by now should be dealt with in time, but they should be put in as soon as possible."

Newcastle City Council has had seven applications for smoking shelters this year. However, a spokeswoman said other applications for alterations at pubs were probably preparations for the ban but did not mention this specifically.

"There is about an eight-week time scale to turn around shelters," she said. "As long as people get them in eight weeks before [the ban begins] I'm confident we can process them in time."