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Q: I run a busy pub which trades into the early hours of the morning. I recently had an email from a Local Authority Licensing Officer bemoaning the fact that my licence has very few conditions upon it and clearly wanting me to undertake a minor variation to add such things as CCTV, a refusals register and an incident log. There is a vague reference to “Police concerns” within the correspondence and I do not know what to do. I do not want them to review my premises licence so wonder whether I should agree to the variation?
A: These situations are always quite tricky. Whatever way you look at it the addition of conditions should be for a reason (the test is whether or not they are “appropriate”) and not just because the Local Authority and / or Police think that your licence is a little “light on conditions”. They ought to be able to back-up their request with actual evidence of, for example, crimes which have gone undetected due to lack of CCTV footage. You should seek a meeting with relevant officers and try to determine exactly what evidence they have of problems to justify their request. You may decide that their request is worthy of a minor variation simply because you are happy to undertake what they want in any event and you do not want to risk a review. On the other hand you may wish to stand your ground and see if they can actually justify a review application with the necessary evidence to back it up.
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