Adam Tugwell

Since I was first elected to the Chair of Tewkesbury Borough Council’s Licensing Committee, I have been grateful not only for my experience as someone who appreciates the concept of the Great British Pub, but also from that as a former CAMRA member and as a Personal License Holder in the work that has followed. It certainly helped in formulating a broad understanding of the current Licensing Laws and how they work in everyday practical terms.

Alcohol abuse and its knock on effects are and will continue to be a point of contention for anyone dealing with Licensing Law for so long as alcohol exists. The fact remains that were it to be discovered today, Alcohol in drink form would in all likelihood be classified as a Class A drug and under this guise would perhaps make many more people think differently towards its use than they currently do.

The reality is however that Alcohol hasn’t just been invented and with the genie having been well and truly out of the bottle for a considerable period of time, good regulation and management are the only effective ways that you will deal with this ‘legal high’ in a meaningful and long lasting way.

With this in mind, it is concerning to read that in response to the current discussion over privately-run ‘drunk tanks’, a Police Chief Constable has gone on the record to rubbish the 2003 Licensing Act and call for it to be scrapped when many of the principles within it do encourage a much improved level of professionalism and accountability within the Licensed Trade. The Law itself arguably only falls down because of the half hearted and ill-considered way that it has been rolled out.

To say that the issues surrounding Licensing are complex would be an understatement. The tail-end reforms of the 2003 Act within the Coalition’s Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 have ironed out a few of the rough edges left by the changes made to Licensing Law by the Blair Government. But it is still the overwhelming desire of Westminster Politicians to keep control of what those in Local Government do which creates the most harm when dealing with its application; all when the public are repetitively told that ‘Localism’ is supposed to be what the Coalition Government is all about.

One of those changes from 2011 which does give a small opportunity of genuine discretion to Licensing Authorities in what they do has been criticised by the Police because of its apparently slow roll out.

The ‘Late Night Levy’ or what is in practice a late hours surcharge for Licensed Premises opening into the early hours has in effect been left at the discretion of the Authorities themselves. Here we finally have an area of Local Government policy-making which might genuinely reflect the views of locally-elected Members and allow for consideration of the true impact that ballooning Regulatory Charges will have on existing pub businesses which in many cases simply couldn’t afford or justify them.

Understandably, this doesn’t sit well with Police Forces who not unlike just about every other public service throughout the Country are all looking for ways to increase income at a time when budgets are being repetitively slashed by Central Government.

This however isn’t good enough reason to rubbish the Licensing Laws as they stand, just as the problems with binge drinking and late night drink-related anti social behaviour should not be directly attributed to the Law itself.

It is the case that the problems should be attributed to the way the Policy has been applied and the failure of both this and the last Government to tie up the loose ends and then to proactively support the system that they have put in place between them.

Ironically, the 2003 Act provided Licensees – or Premises License Holders, with far more autonomy and responsibility for Licensed activities than they ever had before. Through the requirement of training and Licensing of Designated Premises Supervisors and the broad emphasis on promoting and embracing a culture of good practice, Licensed Premises should at least in theory be the safest places for Alcohol to be consumed and therefore the environment that Government really should be supporting.

The reality is however that the unhindered ease with which Retailers can obtain a Premises License both for ‘on’ or ‘off’ the premises consumption has made it horrifyingly simple for supermarkets to stack ‘em high and keep ‘em cheap when it comes to drink, without any real responsibility for what happens when the drink they have sold is consumed thereafter.

Local Licensing Authorities simply have no definitive power to dictate terms of Licenses which would reflect the true needs and requirements of any particular locality.

The one-size-fits-all approach of centrally-derived Licensing Regulation leaves Licensing Authorities being little more than administrators, unable to make truly ‘locality’ based decisions.

When they attempt to do so, applicants can simply appeal to the local Magistrates Court and will usually have little trouble getting anything overturned if their application technically meets Government guidelines – whatever the local issues and impact might actually be. I can clearly state that when the best that the Law allows a Licensing Committee to do is have their ‘concerns’ documented in the minutes of a hearing, you know that something simply isn’t working right.

Put a little more in context. ‘unregulated’, ‘unsupervised’ or drinking outside of a Licensed premises is a direct consequence of what some would consider to be a Licensing free-for-all and the frighteningly low prices at the tills that have made binge drinking as much – if not more of an issue than the ages old problem of alcoholism which itself is much more likely to be monitored and flagged with the watchful eyes of good publicans than it will do when simply kept behind closed doors.

Rather than support the resource and sometimes centralised social points for communities that pubs actually can be, successive Governments continue to oversee their demise and certainly fail to back up the application of their own Policies by stabilising and supporting these important hubs which could do so much more to assist in tackling what are very serious social issues if they were simply encouraged and aided to do so.

However, as things stand some 12 pubs close each and every week. In the majority of cases, these and their potential benefit will be lost to the communities around them forever.

Some will happily argue that pubs no longer have the appeal that they once did and this is why they are closing. There is some truth in this statement and not many can deny that the criminalisation of drink driving had a far reaching if unspoken affect on some venues as many people realised that the risks of having ‘a few’ were simply too high. Subsequently, social drinking for many lost the regularity that it may formally have had.

The Industry changed, especially so in isolated or rural locations where decision makers soon realised that pubs now had to have wider appeal and become a ‘destination’ – a route that for many has been found through serving food and the rise of the gastropub, where people now travel to eat, with drinking just being a consequence.

The ‘boozer’ as it was has since mutated to become what many now know as the ‘sports bar’ and it is perhaps these types of establishments which just revolve around drinking that are actually needed most of all but are more vulnerable to closure because taxation and the onset of the PubCo – the property portfolio owning organisations that charge ridiculous levels of rent for the pubs they own and then seek to take unrealistic margins off just about everything a pub sells via a ‘must buy through us’ caveat or ‘tie’ that makes many already struggling pubs simply impossible to run profitably.

Because of such ‘ties’, rented or leased pubs are left selling overpriced alcohol to customers who in today’s climate are driven greatly by price and rarely by the venue itself when alcohol consumption is the primary reason for going out.

Young people do much of their drinking before they even get to late night venues consuming cheap supermarket drink and yet there seems to be a view that it is these late night premises-based businesses that should pick up the tab, simply because they were the last place that the antisocial drunks had visited.

Few of us appreciate or actually condone antisocial behaviour, but the issues that lead people to behave in the way that they clearly do are reflective of a plethora of social issues which go way beyond the sale of Alcohol itself. As drug taking and drinking is considered by many to be an act of escapism for people who are unhappy at a deeper level, a good place for those in power to start this journey might very well be to ask the simple question ‘why’?

As a Licensing Chair, I do not believe the Government has anywhere near the full measure of the situation beyond that which it sees on paper. It is only through a process of change and of considering the full impact of all elements which are at play within the UK drinks industry and then by making policy changes which are real-solutions driven and take into account the role that all will play, that we will then have Laws in place that really will serve drinks producers, retailers, drinkers and the general public as best they can.

Without taking a comprehensive or ‘holistic’ approach like this, problems will continue and may well reach a point where options available right now, simply don’t exist even in the near future because the resources no longer exist to support them. My starting suggestions would be:

Level the playing field:

• Stop what is in effect pub ‘franchising’ and prevent price escalation through profiteering by PubCo’s. A simple way to do this would be to make it illegal for the owner or premises leaseholder of pubs to let or sub-let a pub to a third party within a contract that also places an obligation upon that tenant to buy any product from their landlord, their landlords agents or any company nominated by them.
• Forget minimum prices across the board, but stop off licenses and supermarkets from selling at or below the equivalent price of pubs in their Licensing Area. Making it illegal for retailers to undercut pubs would almost certainly make pubs more attractive for drinkers than they have been and take a lot of drinking off the streets. Retailers could be required to pay the additional margin or an appropriate tax into a scheme which could support local Policing and facilities such as drunk tanks, which with public services continuing to shrink, could still very much have a place.

Incentivise pub use:

• Lower duty on barrel and bulk supplied alcohol. This would potentially make pub alcohol cheaper still and would have the added environmentally friendly bonus of removing the need for all that packaging with pub glasses being reusable!
• Replace Business Rates on Pubs with a turnover related fee or supplementary tax. This would help new and struggling businesses to keep contributions relative to what they are earning and would have the benefit to the Local Authority of potentially contributing more when pubs are or have become more successful.

Give Licensing Authorities more scope:

• Let Licenses be set locally and limit the right of appeal. The Government should simply set Licensing principles and give the autonomy back to Councils to decide upon what terms Licenses should be granted against these with the balance of power in their interpretation placed back with the Authorities themselves and not ultimately with Magistrates who will arguably see Licensing Appeals as an unnecessary drain on their time. Local representatives are best placed to deal with local issues and no business should be able to just do what they want simply because they have the money available to exhaust the process to a level where those deciding are too far away from the issues placed within their care.

Tighten the existing Regulations:

• Make it a requirement that there is always a Personal License Holder either serving or within supervisory reach when a pub is serving. This would ensure that someone properly qualified and aware of the requirements of Licensing Legislation – but more importantly that the focus on responsible drinking are always maintained is on site and available to make decisions at all times.

There are likely to be many other tried, tested and also innovative ways that problems like drink related antisocial behaviour can be addressed, but this whole issue is a classic iceberg metaphor and very few of those with influence are looking very hard at what lies beneath the surface.

The wrong voices have too much power when it comes to Licensing related issues and more notice must be taken of UK wide interest groups like CAMRA and more localised community organisations, who have a definable cause promoting the interests of end users or the people who are actually affected at street-by-street level, rather than simple referral to the default-setting or usual suspect reference points such as Brewers, PubCo’s, Supermarkets and yes, the Police – all of whom do have particular and usually very specific motivations for pursuing a particular approach.

As with many areas of life where the Government is responsible for some form of legislation or service provision, the issues and key elements of the situation are often much more widespread than many realise.

The point here is that the general public simply will not experience genuine and long-term improvement until those in power actually consider all these factors and then delivers solutions which really are in the best interests of all the stakeholders involved, but primarily the people who put them there first.

Like Planning, Licensing must be put back in to local hands where an appropriate and real-life form of discretion can be applied to its use.

Rather than just tell us that they are all about Localism, the Government should actually be all about Localism and tackling the real-world realities of drink abuse, the behaviour of the industries behind it and the Licensing related issues which affect it would be one on a very long list of good places to start.