Agenda item

Consideration and determination of an application to review the premises licence.

Discussion:

The Principal Licensing and Enforcement Officer informed the Panel that, in accordance with the Licensing Act 2003 the Council had received an application for an Expedited Review from Kent Police, in relation to the premises licence at the White Horse, 95 High Street, Rainham, Kent ME8 8AA, as the premises had been associated with serious crime and disorder. She explained that the relevant provisions within the Licensing Act 2003 allowed a quick process for attaching interim conditions to a licence and a fast track licence review when the police consider that the premises concerned was associated with serious crime or serious disorder, or both. The Act required expedited premises licence review applications to be considered within 48 hours to consider what interim steps should be taken, pending a full hearing of the issues within 28 days of the date that the application was served. The Panel noted that, in this case, a hearing had been held on 7 June 2017 when the Licensing Hearing Panel determined that no interim measures were necessary pending the full review hearing as the premises had voluntarily closed. 

The Principal Licensing and Enforcement Officer advised that, following receipt of an application to transfer the Premises Licence, the new licensee and the Police had agreed on a number of additional conditions to be placed on the license.

These were as follows:

1.     CCTV will be provided in the form of a recordable system, capable of providing pictures of evidential quality in all lighting conditions.

·           Equipment must be maintained in good working order, be correctly time and date stamped, recordings MUST be kept on the hard drive and kept for a period of 30 days and handed to Police upon reasonable request. 

·           The premises licence holder must ensure at all times a DPS or appointed member of staff is capable and competent at downloading CCTV footage in a recordable format to the Police and Local Authority upon reasonable request. 

·           The recording equipment and hard drive shall be kept in a secure environment under the control of the DPS or other responsible named individual.

·           In the event of technical failure of the CCTV equipment the premises licence holder or DPS must report the failure to the Police Licensing Officer within 24 hours unless the CCTV will be repaired before that time (licensing.north.division@kent.pnn.police.uk)

2.  All persons that sell or supply alcohol to customers must have licensing training. 

Training should take place within six weeks of employment and any new employees will be supervised until the training has taken place.  Training must include:-

·             Avoiding sales of alcohol or age restricted products to those under the age of 18.

·             Recognising customers who appear drunk and refusing sale or supply of alcohol.

·             Knows the licensing objectives and have read and understood licence conditions.

·             Can produce licences/certificates/permits relevant to the premises in the absence of licence holder/DPS.

·             Refresher training should be repeated a minimum of every twelve months or earlier if required due to changes of legislation.

·             Training records must be kept on the premises and shall contain the nature, content and frequency of all training.

·             Records must be made available for inspection by Police, Police Licensing Officer and authorised officers from the Local Authority upon reasonable request either electronically or hard copy.

3.  The License Holder will maintain auditable refusal/incident records. These records will detail the following;

a)         Day, Date and Time of Refusal/Incident.

b)        Nature of Refusal/Incident and reason.

c)         Details of or description of the individual.

These records will be made available for inspection to any Police Officer, Police Licensing Officer, and Officer of the Local Authority immediately upon demand.

4.   The premises shall have a written drugs policy, this will detail the strategies to minimise the use and supply of illegal drugs within the premises.  The drugs policy shall include a structured training policy for all staff covering the issues of misuse of drugs in relation to licensed premises.  Records must be kept to show members of staff who have taken the training.

5.  The DPS will risk assess the need for door supervisors. Shall the use of door supervisors be deemed necessary by the risk assessment, a minimum of 2 SIA registered door supervisors will be employed. All SIA registered door staff engaged outside or at the entrance to the premises will wear a reflective tabard or armband.

6.  The premises licence holder will operate a 'Challenge 25' policy at all times.

A representative of Kent Police presented the application for a review of the premises licence.  There being no questions, the representatives of the premises stated their case and were questioned by the representatives of the Police and by Panel members.

The representatives of the Police and of the premises, and the Principal Licensing and Enforcement Officer, left the room during the Panel’s deliberations and returned before the Chairman announced the Panel’s decision.

Decision:

a)     In reviewing the current premises licence, the Panel considered the oral, written and visual evidence presented at the hearing and determined that the additional conditions agreed between the licensee’s representative and the Police, as set out above, be placed on the licence in order to meet the licensing objectives.

b)     The Panel noted the informal agreement to strengthen condition 5 through the provision of door supervisors for a period of two months after the premises re-opened following refurbishment and requested that this be acted upon.

c)     The Panel also noted that the new licensee had established operating practices and requested that these be put in place at the premises.

d)     The Panel further noted that the premises were undergoing refurbishment and requested that, where possible, the opportunity be taken to design out potential problems through, for example, the removal of flat surfaces in the toilet areas and the removal of small dark passages.