Alcohol Strategy plans for Cumulative Impact Zones will cost £18.9m

By John Harrington

- Last updated on GMT

Related tags Home office Business

Plans to add a health-related licence objective for venues in cumulative impact areas (CIAs) will cost the industry £18.9m per year, according to Government estimates.

Under the proposal, authorities would be able to consider the impact of new venues located inside CIAs on the health of the population when considering whether to grant a licence.

An impact assessment document on the plan says: “There will be an impact on the profit of the alcohol industry and total business profits overall because of the restrictions on the number of licences issued; this is estimated as an economic loss of £18.9m per year.

“There would be estimated transition costs for business of £0.2m and for licensing authorities of £0.5m. Exchequer losses are expected to be roughly £12m per year.”

The proposal was just one of several included in a Home Office consultation released last week.

Separate impact assessments on other parts of the consultation are more positive for operators. For example, the plan to remove the requirement to renew alcohol licences every 10 years would save businesses £3.7m per annum. Scrapping the need to advertise licence applications in newspapers would save an estimated £7.3m.

And increasing the maximum number of temporary events notices from 12 to 15 or 18 per year would give an average annual benefit of £0.5m, the Home Office says.

It’s been widely reported that the most high-profile aspect of the consultation, implementing a minimum price of alcohol of 45p per unit, would cost the Exchequer £200m. It estimates a £220m saving for health bodies.

The impact assessment says minimum pricing will cost businesses, mostly supermarkets, £9.6m in the transition year and have a net annual cost to businesses of £1m per annually.

Meanwhile, the Home Office says that plans to allow licences on motorway service areas would bring a benefit to businesses of £2.5m per year, or £1.2m if applied only to hotels on motorway services.

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