AAA White Paper The political economy of informal events, 2030 | Page 84

1. THE LICENSING PROCESS NEEDS TO BECOME MUCH LESS
BUREAUCRATIC
To sell alcohol or provide live and/or recorded music to more than 500
people after 11pm, one must get a Premises Licence and, in the case of
alcohol, appoint and gain the formal written consent of a Designated
Premises Supervisor (DPS) to act as the key person responsible for the
day to day management of the premises.
Councils grant Premises Licences. While they’re obliged to publish
a Statement of Licensing Policy every five years, so as to anticipate
issues and guide licensing decisions, such decisions are also shaped by
the written representations of other statutory responsible authorities
(principally the police and Environmental Health) or of the public, and
by the adjudication made by the council’s licensing sub-committee.
To the uninitiated, the legally-required Premises Licence
Application (PLA) forms that event organisers fill out to meet the
requirements of the Licensing Act 2003 (Premises licences and club
premises certificates) Regulations 2005 – these look daunting. At first
sight, they would seem to make getting a licence to hold a festival or
a club night, and to be supplied with and retail alcohol there, nearly
impossible. The whole forms document, complete with a long series of
long prefatory clauses, consists of 132 pages, 42 parts, 13 Schedules and
well over 4000 words. An Explanatory Note adds another 800 words;
an Explanatory Memorandum on the purpose of the Act, ‘accessible to
readers who are not legally qualified’, adds a further 18,000. The 2003
Act itself? It runs to 75,000 words.
With the PLA, those applying for a licence must submit: written
steps to be taken to promote the four Objectives of the Act; detailed
layout plans of the premises or site and perimeters (with campsites
and car parks best included); a consent form signed by the DPS, and
the right licensing fees.
Nevertheless, and – as Lou Reed used to put it – ‘despite all the
complications’, thousands of licenses are issued each year. Indeed, the
phrase ‘licensed premises’ covers not just buildings or shops for which
BOX 3: THE FUTURE EVOLUTION OF LICENSING FEES
Sixteen years on from the 2003 Licensing
Act, licensing fees may change before too
long. As the House of Lords Select Committee
on the Act observed in 2017, the costs of
administering it vary from place to place, and
between local authorities. Sooner or later,
therefore, licensing fee levels may become a
matter for local licensing authorities, and stop
being set as a national, one-size-fits-all thing.
Second, the influential Local Government
Association wants fees changed. For while
the LGA favours the localisation of licensing
fees, it also wants that complemented by
a reasonable increase in licensing fees
nationwide. Its logic: although the current
process of licensing is meant to pay for
itself, that doesn’t always happen. On many
occasions, local authorities find that licensing
fees don’t fully cover the time spent handling a
license, or the costs incurred.
To this White Paper, modestly higher licensing
fees seem like a reasonable price for
organisers of informal events to pay, if that will
help make councils come to regard informal
events with greater goodwill.
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