NCPLH stands for National Certificate for Personal Licence Holders. It’s the qualification that you have to obtain if you want to apply for a Personal Licence which, over three years since they came into effect, I’m finally doing.

Having handled over 1,000 applications for Personal Licences over the years I decided it’s finally time to do my own. Firstly to get an insight into what it is I continually ask my clients to do and, secondly, because there seems little reason why I shouldn’t hold one myself (it might even be useful).

Gerry Cleary of Pub and Club Services taught the course and took a group of us through the subject in a steady, patient manner before setting us loose on the exam in the afternoon.

We should get our results tomorrow. If I haven’t passed I’ll never live it down!

On 26 January 2009 the Penalties for Disorderly Behaviour (Amount of Penalty) (Amendment) Order 2008 will come into effect, giving licensing officers and Trading Standards officers the power to levy on-the-spot fines for certain offences.

If an offender does not pay immediately the matter will be dealt with by a court in the normal way, potentially incurring a higher level of fine and criminal conviction.

There are two levels of fine and all offences are as listed under the Licensing Act 2003 unless specified.

Offences attracting penalty of £80 for persons aged 16 or over, and £40 for persons under 16:

• Allowing disorderly conduct on licensed premises (s140)
• Obtaining alcohol for consumption on relevant premises for a person who is drunk (s142)
• Failure of person who is drunk or disorderly to leave relevant premises on request (s143)
• Allowing unaccompanied children under 16 on certain premises (s145)
• Sale of alcohol to persons under 18 (s146 (1) and (3))
• Purchase of alcohol by persons under 18 on relevant premises (s149 (1))
• Purchase of alcohol on behalf of persons under 18 (s149 (3) and (4))
• Delivery of alcohol to persons under 18 or allowing such delivery (s151)

Offences attracting penalty of £50 for persons aged 16 and over, or £30 for persons under 16:

• Being drunk in a highway, other public place or licensed premises (s12 Licensing Act 1872)
• Sale of alcohol to a person who is drunk (s141)
• Consumption of alcohol by a person under 18 on relevant premises or allowing such consumption (s150)

The relevant part of the council website is called Democracy in Birmingham. Here’s what the site looks like:

To find licensing reports:

1. Select ‘Regulatory’ in the drop-down box for ‘Meeting Body Type’
2. Choose either ‘Licensing Committee’ or one of Licensing Sub-Committees A to E

This is interesting to someone like me but there are a few immediately obvious problems with the setup here.

The information isn’t searchable. The text of all the documents is in PDF format, which isn’t searchable in the way that you might use Google to search for information.

I can’t subscribe to the information. If I want to receive every licensing report from the Birmingham licensing committees (and I do) then I’ll have to keep checking back on the website. This is a waste of time and effort when very simple technology (called RSS) exists to send that information to anyone at no cost as soon as it is produced.

The story is liekly to be similar in councils up and down the country. I imagine many websites were designed before RSS became commonplace (you can click the orange button to get free updates from this website using RSS – try it) but I believe making democratic information available should be an imperative.

From thisiskent.co.uk/sevenoaks, the secretary of the Underriver village association has complained about the red tape ininvolved in applying for Temporary Event Notices for her association’s charity events.

“You have to pay £21 each time but the form filling and posting is ridiculous when you are just volunteers.”

She said six pages of information have to be filled in, but because she has to keep one copy and send others to the council and police, it means 24 sheets of paper have to be printed each time she applies.

“They have given us an alternative but they have sent lots of paper out as an alternative – 33 pages – and I don’t even understand what it says,” Mrs Jordan said.

“You have to be a lawyer to understand it.”

A common and completely understandable complaint.

It seems Michael Fallon MP brought this issue up during the Queen’s Speech debate at the Houses of Commons a couple of weeks ago, saying:

It’s ludicrous, having to fill in so many pages and then not being able to submit them online

Something I agree with entirely.

The Regional Alcohol Group brings together senior regional representatives from: the NHS, Police, Probation, Voluntary and Community Sector, Trading Standards and some Government Departments in the region to look at emerging alcohol harm related issues and ways in which these could be tackled within the West Midlands region.”

See here for more info about the West Midlands Regional Alcohol Group.

This form has attracted criticism for a variety of reasons, most serious of which are the claims of racial claiming. In a letter to the former Met chief Sir Ian Blair, Feargal Sharkey wrote:

In explicitly singling out performances and musical styles favoured by the black community we believe the use of Risk Assessment Form 696 is disproportionate, unacceptable and damaging to live music

Not only has Mr Sharkey now complained to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, but the Musician’s Union is apparently consulting lawyers on the basis that the privacy of their members may be affected – the form asks for the names, addresses and phone numbers of all performers.

For those that haven’t seen it, this is what the form looks like:

Others reporting on the furore include The London Daily News, the NME and musician/promoter Rich Batsford links to the Number 10 petion and Facebook group that have been started.

The report in The Independent raises the prospect of this practice extending to other cities. However, it already seems to be the case elsewhere in the country that police forces have standard conditions relating to ‘risk events’. Have you come across this in your area?

As well as helping people to apply for alcohol and entertainment licences, I advise individuals, businesses and organisations on how they can make the most of the internet.  As is usually the way, until now I’ve not applied the same advice to my own business.

Better late than never though. As well as a general spruce-up you can now ’subscribe’ to news updates for free.  News updates will include licensing developments, general licensing news, information about services offered by Osiris Licensing and examples of the sorts of work we do.