HMG publish their (hastily drafted?) consultation on Drinking Responsibly. (Continued)

Off licences – should they be included? The suggestion is that they should as they have a role to play.

Recovery of costs – the preferred suggestion is that failure to pay should be enforced through an automatic licence penalty such as curtailed opening hours or even closure, rather than through normal debt recovery procedures. (Interestingly in the LA 2003 there is no similar penalty for non-payment of licence fees).

What is not clear is how responsible premises within an ADZ might be excluded from the process/penalty? The proposals appear to catch all premises within the area.

Under-age sales – the Paper recites the existing powers, but acknowledges that there are no powers currently available to enable the police to close temporarily premises which have been identified as persistently selling to under-age young people.

This power should be made available to the Police, the LA or trading standards officers and should extend to both on and off licence premises. If invoked, premises could still sell their non-alcoholic products.

Triggers might include incurring a significant number of fixed penalty notices within a specified time or evidence gathered by the relevant officers.

Closure orders “could” be time limited to 24/48 hours, but query not necessarily so limited; the Paper is not clear.

The offence would be premises linked and therefore not avoidable by seeking to substitute short term the licensee for those premises.
Who should actually exercise the power?  Suggested are a senior officer of police, and/or the Chief Executive of the LA or an Inspector of Weights and Measures on the basis of specific evidence or intelligence.

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