I now gather that existing licenses last for 3 years and expire in February. Does this mean that All licenses expire next Feb or only about 1/3 of them, with the remainder needing renewal in 2005 and 2006 ? If the latter is the case, then a landlord might have 30 months left before he needs to apply for his new license. As I'm sure that he wouldn't be in a hurry to fork out £500 (or perhaps £1,000), he would have to wait two and a half years to tick the famous box and get an entertainment license.

In fact, I feel that things will be in somewhat of a limbo until the rate has been fixed - the LAs will probably want to delay things until they've held out for the maximum fee possible. I assume that until things are sorted, many councils (especially avaricious Greenwich) will want to try forcing landlords to buy PELs at high prices - will this still be possible ?