Yesterday Teresa May announced the new proposals to change the licensing act to prevent alcoholism in city centres and to prevent binge drinking. With it the home office opened up a 6 week public consultation on the proposed changes.
Included in this document are such offerings as:
- Increased licence fees
- Enabling licensing authorities to repeal licences for non-payment of fees
- Removing the rule that objectors must be 'in the vicinity'
- Requiring greater weight to be given to police representations and objections
- Enabling licensing authorities to refuse grants or trigger reviews without the need for representations
- Introducing greater restrictions on Temporary Event Notices
- Extending closure orders from 48 hours to 7 days
- Introducing an additional levy on premises opening late to fund policing
- Banning sales of alcohol below cost price
- Enabling authorities to consider the impact of a licence on public health when exercising their functions.
A change of remit precluded this announcement with the Home Office taking the responsibility for alcohol licensing away from DCMS but leaving the entertainment aspects of licensing with DCMS.
This split implies that alcohol licenses and entertainments licenses are separate entities, they are not! At the end of the process a venue or event organiser ends up with a license, this license allows both the sale of alcohol and also the provision of entertainment.
In commencing this divide it is clear that the sole focus of the Home Office is to effect a change on issues of anti-social behaviour in city centres and they are, quite reasonably as it is not a Home Office remit, ignoring any knock on effects such changes would have on music venues or outdoor events.
The key responsibility for protecting the interests of culture and entertainment is presumably left with the struggling DCMS. Many will note from the news that DCMS is being cut back by Jeremy Hunt with up to one in two staff being made redundant. The question that unerringly sits at the front of my mind at the moment is this,
"Is a ministry thrown completely into disarray by loosing half its staff and being asked to move location going to be in any way capable of protecting the interests of culture and arts against a well organised and heavily financed ministry preparing to make sweeping changes to a system?"
Unfortunately then I fear that arts and culture industry is going to have to look after itself here and give DCMS the voice it needs. I am currently writing my objections to the proposed changes that attempt to encompass both my cultural, procedural, legal and moral concerns about the proposals. When these are finished I shall release them for others to cherry pick and send in personal objections.
As this consultation has been released by the Home office it is therefore failing to acknowledge that such changes can easily have a detrimental effect on the media and culture in the UK.
Whilst I respect that anti-social behaviour as a result of drinking is a problem in the UK and that ways to minimilise this should be considered. to hastily throw powers at police and local authorities allowing them to close down venues and revoke licenses at will and take away the need to genuinely consider the situation is clearly not the solution, it is dangerous and it will result in good causes loosing out or being cancelled.
The proposed changes allow a shoot first, ask questions later attitude towards the awarding and revocation of licenses, removing the rights of businesses to present a reasoned case. It will allow "responsible authorities" to ignore cultural significance in the face of emotive and insubstantial evidence.
There is a desire in the new proposals to "remove bureaucracy" from the process but the interpretation of this seems to be the inclination to remove the right to a fair hearing on the part of the licensee, and give both the police and local authorities the power to issue summary revocations or refusals of licenses without the "need" to hear opposing arguments.
If the government is going to persist on removing the state funding for arts and culture in spite of this being of questionable logic even on purely economic terms and they are demanding that philanthropy becomes the central source of funding then events and venues need to find it easier to get licenses not harder.
I hope this is vaguely informative, more to follow
Good thoughts. I have yet to read the Home Office doc, but it does seem to me (as you say) that in a well-meaning attempt to curb anti-social behaviour centred around late night drinking in city and town centres, the Government has completely overlooked the effect on temporary entertainment events, from village fetes to full blown festivals. However, it is possible that this is partly an innocent overlooking, caused by ignorance rather than malice towards the entertainment industry. If so decent representation, particularly if it targets tory MPs (esp 1922 members), may yield results IMHO. The HoC returns on 6 Sep - presumably the consultation is timed to end the Friday before? ;)
ReplyDeletethe leaping buffoon
Whilst this is the case there are a number of big questions:
ReplyDeleteFirstly is this a legal process or a civil one? If it is a legal process, which it should be, all parties should submit evidence and present their case, this should be viewed and judged impartially. The police should not simply have more weighting because they are the police, I have come across numerous examples in the events industry where the police have simply been wrong, either because of a lack of understanding, fear or something more malicious.
Also how can an impartial decision be made about a license review if the local authority is made a responsible authority, there will be no such thing as a fair hearing if a licensee is submitting evidence to defend against a local authority that is also making the decision... why would a committee decide to vote down its own view? daft
Next is this bizarre suggestion that the police or authority can reduce "bureaucracy" by removing the need to prove that there is a problem??? Am I the only one who finds that truely truely stupid. It is already hard enough to get the police to come up with a reason why they are opposing the situation, which makes the job of defending a position really difficult. It is absurd to expect a licensee to stand up in a license review situation without knowing clearly what the problem is and try and defend themselves.
The authorities should be required to give more clarity not less.
Also why do the police need more weighting? they already have a huge resource pool that they regularly delve into if they want to represent against a license. For them to appear without legal representation and a wadge of solicitors papers is almost unheard of. They then proceed to make it very clear repeatedly that they are the most important people in the room, there is absolutely no need to extend that privilege.