Reducing burden and bureaucracy of licensing and covering its cost (part 1)
Licence fees have not been increased since their introduction and therefore some sort of increase is long overdue. This would be hugely welcomed by licensing authorities who have long argued that their enforcement costs exceed their fee income.
The Government also acknowledges that adopting a tougher licensing regime as outlined in these proposals may lead to an increase in the number of licence reviews conducted, and a subsequent risk of increased burden on local licensing authorities. Any additional burdens on licensing authorities should also be reflected in the level of licence fees.
This is worrying. An argument that my wages had not been increased for some time and that this fact alone justified an increase, would be unlikely to succeed without some increase in productivity. But it would appear that this Govt intend to reward the LGA Group lobby with an increase in fees, despite the current mess and the fact that this was always the fear expressed about moving alcohol licensing from the courts to the local councils.
The idea that the income from fees should reflect enforcement costs - without any examination of these cost or any attempt to reduce them, at a time when every other area of public service is supposed to be doing this is a great concern.
For it follows from this equation that an increase in fees will reduce even further the number of licensed premises and and that a reduction in the total number of licensed premises will further reduce the total income from fees.
If the fear is that there will be an increase in the already high number of costly licensing reviews, as a result of these proposals, perhaps the cost of these should be made by those currently being encouraged to initiate these reviews. Perhaps this would result in less objections?