Current licensing policy

Licensing policy 

Statement of licensing policy

Our Statement of Licensing Policy sets out our expectations and our approach to discharging our duties under the Licensing Act 2003.  It is used by applicants applying for licences, authorities such as the Police and residents when commenting on applications, by Members when making decisions on applications and by the Magistrates Court if our decision on an application is appealed.

The Licensing Act 2003 requires that we produce a Statement of Licensing Policy and review it every three years.  We published our first Statement of Licensing Policy in January 2005.  This Policy ran until 2008 and was further updated in 2010 when we extended the Special Policy Area at Seven Dials.  This Policy expired on 6 January 2011.

To produce a new draft Policy for 2011, we interviewed groups including residents associations, licence holders and the Police in December 2009 and January 2010.  We obtained alcohol related crime data from the Police and commissioned interviews with night time economy users and observational studies in the two Special Policy Areas at Seven Dials and Camden Town.  This enabled us to produce a draft Policy and we sent out nearly 4300 consultation packs in May 2010.  The consultation ran for three months and we received 271 responses, overwhelmingly in favour of the proposed changes to the Policy.

The main changes to our Statement of Licensing Policy for 2011 are:

• Framework Hours now start later
• The Cumulative Impact Policies at Seven Dials and Camden Town now apply to material variations of licences as well as to the grant of new licences, and also to late night refreshment premises such as takeaways and to off licences
• We have included a new chapter on “Premises Policies” to make it easier for users to find relevant conditions that may be imposed or volunteered for different types of venue such as pubs, theatres, late night takeaways and nightclubs
• New sections have been produced providing guidance on variation applications and reviews
• The sections on Personal Licences and Designated Premises Supervisors have been expanded to make our expectations clearer
• We have created an appendix on dispersal policies to help licence holders minimise nuisance caused by customers leaving their premises at night.

Further details on research and what these changes mean can be found by reading the relevant sections of the Statement of Licensing Policy.

The revised policy is effective from Friday 7 January 2011.

• download: Statement of Licensing Policy 2011
• help with PDFs

Page last updated Feb 4, 2011 10:43 AM