ACS chief executive James Lowman has called on the House of Lords Licensing Act Committee to retain the current licensing objectives as part of an evidence session in Parliament, urging the Committee to focus on retailers that are not abiding by the law instead of imposing new restrictions on responsible retailers.
Speaking during the evidence session, Mr Lowman said: “One of the weaknesses of the Licensing Act that it is not used enough to take away licences from those engaged in duty fraud. When licences are taken away, too often, the licensee comes back in another guise through someone else being on the licence or through a different premises. That is an area of the Licensing Act which is vastly underused, and a lot of the problems we’re talking about will be addressed by far better use of the existing powers.”
In a written submission to the Committee, ACS outlined a number of ways in which the Licensing Act could be improved for licensees, including:
• removing the requirement for licensees to display a statutory notice in a local newspaper when applying for an alcohol licence or major variation;
• creating a central online platform to manage licensing applications;
• ensuring licensing conditions are based on recent, local, relevant evidence;
• removing the requirement for forecourt retailers to prove the primary use of their business as retail.
As part of the consultation, the Committee have asked whether the ‘protection of health and wellbeing’ be introduced as an additional licensing objective.
Mr Lowman continued: “We do not believe that the licensing system is an appropriate mechanism to address alcohol related health harms. Since the introduction of the Licensing Act in 2005, alcohol harm and consumption has been falling, showing that the current objectives are effective. We believe that to prevent alcohol related harm, the Government must focus on ensuring the compliance and standards of retailers in the market as opposed to introducing a measure that could lead to responsible retailers being blocked from having a licence.”
The full evidence session is available to listen to on the Parliament website here: http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/56db2b63-e212-4215-bd4d-a7fd64…
