Issues relating to premises licence representations

[PippaH]

Two questions...

1. Where evidence is submitted in a representation against a premises licence, does the local authority have to make all the submitted evidence in that representation available to the applicant (or their representative) AND the sub-committee, and include all submitted evidence in the documentation available at the hearing? I ask because in one case a piece of submitted evidence was only made available to the applicant's representative; it was not made available to anyone else because the local authority deemed it related to administrative issues not relevant to the hearing. Any ideas on whether it is permissible to share evidence with the applicant that is not made accessible to the Licensing sub-committee?


2. Asking for a resident's group: Where a local authority rejects a representation because it claims the representation does not address the four licensing objectives, is a local authority obliged to be able to explain why the representation did not meet the requirements?

[des8]

If the authority deemed the representation not to be relevant, such representation can be disregarded. Hence there would be no need to share it.

The act does not require the local authority to explain why the representation does not address the licencing objectives as set out in the 2003 Act,
although it would seem sensible to give an explanation!

If one who has lodged a representation does not agree with the council's decision they can within 21 days lodge an appeal with the magistrates court
Other courses of action include judicial review or complaint to LGO

[PippaH]

DES8, thank you for your response.

The authority deemed the representation acceptable; this is what prompted my question: was the authority following correct procedure by excluding some of the material which formed part of an accepted representation?

In the second case, a formal request for an explanation was sought after the decision was made to reject two consecutive representations submitted by the residents' group. Former representations, over several years, had previously been deemed acceptable. The authority claimed they were not under any obligation to provide an explanation for their decision, but this response makes it near impossible to challenge that decision, or change the style/content of future representations to meet approval of the authority.

As for lodging an appeal, you'd need a hefty wad of cash to give that serious consideration... Surely it is not within the remit of the LGO to appeal against an authority granting a licence application unless the authority have not followed correct procedure?

[des8]

When the authority make a decision they do not have to justify it.
If one disagrees with that decision the correct course of action is to appeal it. and show why that decision is incorrect

Appealing to LGO has to be on grounds that the action of the council in deciding the representations were unacceptable i.e. show why your representations should have been deemed acceptable and then considered
You would not be appealing against the grant, but the way in which it was granted

[PippaH]

Thank you again for your response. I would point out that neither of my questions were about appealing the decision to grant a licence.

My second question related to whether a local authority is obliged to explain it's reasons for rejecting a representation. Your advice is that the LGO would be able to address any unresolved complaints the residents' association had about why their (not my) representation was rejected. This was the sort of answer I hoped to pass on to the residents. Thank you for your efforts!