The inside track on Hartlepool council's EMRO rejection

You will all no doubt know by now, so at the risk of repeating myself, an EMRO is an option for a licensing authority to restrict the sale of alcohol (but not other licensable activities) in a specified area between the hours of midnight and 6am.

At a licensing meeting held on 17 December 2012, following a request by the police and director of public health, Hartlepool licensing committee decided to consult formally on an EMRO restricting the sale of alcohol to 2am, a proposal that would directly affect about 13 operators with licences permitting the sale of alcohol later than this.

The proposal then went out to formal consultation between February and March 2013 (42 days in total) and attracted substantial objections against, both from local and national operators and trade bodies. There were some members of the public who were in support of the EMRO.

The council chamber on 7 May 2013 was packed with lawyers (including ourselves), trade bodies, local operators, committee members and (I counted two) officials from other licensing/responsible authorities observing the proceedings.

The stakes were high — most trade bodies and national operators are against EMROs in principle, whether or not their premises are directly affected in any specific geographic area, and it was also clear that once the local independent operators had considered both the direct and indirect impact of a 2am finish time there was almost unanimous opposition to the EMRO from this quarter as well.

For our part, representing a national trade body and a national operator with premises in Hartlepool, we had attacked the licensing authority’s non-compliance with procedural requirements, the paucity of the evidence justifying an EMRO, and also the serious economic consequences, not only for local operators but the town more generally.

By way of example, the ‘evidence’ that was presented to the licensing committee at its initial meeting of 17 December 2012 consisted of a two-page letter from the police and director of public health citing police resourcing issues, an allegedly unacceptable level of alcohol-related A&E hospital admissions and general health concerns.

‘Supporting’ evidence consisted of incident reports from July and August 2012 only. The committee was also presented with a report dated 2009 (ie over three and a half years old), consisting of crime and disorder statistics that were not only out of date but imprecise, inconsistent and actually showed an improvement in general levels of incidents since 2005.

There is not room here to go into the detail, but suffice to say that for a council to initiate an EMRO proposal based upon evidence that is over three and a half years old, together with a letter citing reasons that are not licensing objectives, was a major part of our objection. Further to this, more up to date evidence that was provided by the police in March 2013 only went to reinforce the improvement in crime and antisocial behaviour in the night-time economy — this was an improvement indeed better than the national average.
Important precedent​
It was interesting, therefore, that having heard submissions from local and national operators alike, the chairman of the Hartlepool licensing committee announced the decision not to proceed with an EMRO at this stage essentially for two reasons.

The first was the undoubted ‘significant improvements’ that had been made to the town centre in terms of reducing violence.

The second was that the licensing committee is mindful of the concerns raised by local licensees that in the current economic climate a reduction in hours could have serious consequences for the viability of their businesses.

In short, a professed reason for not proceeding with an EMRO was the financial harm it would cause to the night-time economy in Hartlepool.

This is, in my view, an important precedent — it shows that the first council to propose an EMRO has explicitly accepted that, when considering whether it is ‘appropriate’ based upon the licensing objectives, financial implications for the area are a fundamental factor.

This has to be right, in my view. Licensing authorities can’t simply look at whether crime and disorder has gone up or down. They must recognise that licensed premises are a possession entitled to a measure of protection under human rights legislation, part of the delicate balance of rights and responsibilities that exists in any night-time economy.

EMROs have been described as a “blunt instrument” of last resort, but the night-time economy is a far more subtle and complex world than that. Have the inadequacies of this clumsy legislation already been exposed? Another alcohol disorder zone perhaps? Time will tell.