Issue - meetings

To consider recommendations from the Licensing Committee on changes to the Licensing protocol.

The Licensing Committee will meet on the 22 of June to consider the attached reports and reort from this Committee will follow.

The Council’s Licensing Procedure Rules (“the Protcol”) and the Summary  Procedure rules need to be updated to allow Licensing Sub-Committees to operate efficiently  and in keeping with the needs of Licensing Sub-Committees.

Ms Michelle Williams, Senior Litigations Lawyer and Ms Daliah Barrett, Licensing Team Leader, presented the item.

The Committee discussed the protocol rules and heard that: 

·           Rule 29 partly referred to a facility to submit information confidentially to the  Council. It would be expected that the party communicating the confidential information to also send the Council a copy of the document that was unredacted so that the confidential information could be inspected in addition to the redacted copy. It would be for the Council to decide whether or not the information was actually confidential. The rule was mainly there to deal with the main confidential information that the Council were provided with; the names and addresses of interested parties possibly opposing an application. The information could only be kept truly confidential if there was a threat to those individuals if their details were disclosed. If there was no threat, it may be that the information would have to be shared with the other parties, although the other parties would be asked to keep their information confidential. It was the legislation which set out the ground rules in terms of whether, particularly in terms of names and addresses, if they could be kept confidential. The legislation stated that if there was a threat, a reason would need to be substantiated to determine if there was a threat to the individual.

·           An individual wanting to complain about a licenced premises was able to do so and there was a mechanism within the Council for it to even be an anonymous complaint. In terms of the Licencing legislation itself, the Licensing Authority could not accept a representation on an application where the representor had not provided their name and address.

·           If allegations were being made, the applicant or licence holder had the right to know the case against them. In terms of licencing regulations, those making representations no longer were subject to a proximity test whereby they had to live within a certain radius of the locality. An applicant had a right to know if someone complaining about a premises how far the objector lived away from the premises (unless there was a substantiated threat).

·           Rule 29 would be changed to read that any party submitting their information could make a request for certain details to be kept confidential so it was somewhat clear that the determination on whether or not certain information was kept confidential would ultimately be made by the Licensing Authority (or the Council).

·           Pages 32 and 33 of the agenda papers relating to Licensing hearings and Gambling hearings appeared to have different procedures for applicants. The protocol in relation to Licensing hearings appeared to suggest that in most cases, a further opportunity would be provided for the applicant or licence holder to attend another hearing if they were absent from the meeting, but the protocol in relation to hearings relating to the Gambling Act appeared to suggest that the hearing would proceed in the absence of the applicant or licence  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6