ClacksWeb - Clackmannanshire Council Online

Implementation of the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005

The transitional phase during which existing licensees have the opportunity to convert their existing licences to premises licences commenced on 1 February 2008 and will run to 1 September 2009. These reports provide information on progress towards full implementation of the 2005 Act and will highlight issues being dealt with and updates on grant of licences.

Our Licensing Standards Officer, Paul Fair, joined us in April. His role is to : provide information and guidance to all interested parties on the operation of the 2005 Act in Clackmannanshire ; to supervise compliance with licence conditions and the requirements of the Act by premises and occasional licence holders and to provide mediation services to avoid or resolve disputes/disagreements between licence holders and other persons regarding compliance issues.

Paul has visited many applicants for a premises licence and has assisted them regarding display of site notices and issues arising from their applications. He has met with police representatives to discuss communications and liaison. He has assisted our Licensing Administrator in checking all applications and reporting to the Clerk. He has made presentations at the meetings with club representatives and to Board members to explain his statutory role and outline how he intends to carry out his duties.

Licensing staff have been dealing with the first tranche of applications in preparation for a Board meeting. This involves a very considerable amount of work in checking applications, layout plans and operating plans. Most applications have not resulted in problems and the Board will be invited to grant them en bloc. There are a group of applications which have attracted representations on behalf of the Chief Constable and some of these will require to be determined by the Board after individual hearings. The issues most commonly arising are: terminal hour in outdoor drinking areas, the suitability of premises for children and proposals by some premises to be open for televised sports events during the night.

The Board will hold a procedural meeting on 13th June and the Board meeting will take place on 17th June.

The next closing date for applications is 6th June and licensing staff are already turning their attention to checking these applications. Staff have learned a lot from processing the first batch of applications and every effort will be made to streamline the process and provide as much advice and assistance to applicants as possible to enable applicants to improve the quality of their applications.

Information sessions for registered clubs were held on 28 and 29 April this year. These were well attended and provided a good opportunity to answer queries and provide information.

Review of the licensing pages of ClacksWeb is almost complete.

The Licensing Administrator and the Clerk have attended meetings of the licensing software User Group and the National Personal Licence Database Users' Group which are discussing the IT requirements of the new liquor licensing system. The Anite Liquor Licensing Module is available and is being tested by our Licensing Administrator. There have been delays in making the NPLD available and it is unlikely that full functionality will be achieved for several months.