Agenda item

Sandy Munro (Depute Clerk to the Aberdeen City Licensing Board) advised that the Legal Licensing team was preparing to review the Statement of Licensing Policy (SLP) and they had welcomed the Forum’s feedback. He noted that nothing would be off the table and the Forum’s views would be taken into consideration during development of the SLP. Thereafter Mr Munro provided a response to each of the Forum’s recommendations as outlined in correspondence dated 13 January 2016:-

With regards to the Aspirational Statement, the Convener advised that the Board’s first draft was not particularly aspirational and asked if this would be reviewed. Mr Munro suggested that this would be looked at with the aim of aligning the statement and the SLP more closely to the five licensing objectives;

With regards to the Policy Statement/Language, Mr Munro confirmed that the use of plain English would be favoured wherever possible but there may be occasions where the use of statutory language may be unavoidable;

With regards to the website, Mr Munro explained that the Legal Licensing team would have an input on the overhaul of its City Council webpage, but noted that they would not have administrative control as this resided with colleagues in IT and Transformation. Heather Wilson (Public Health) suggested that the Licensing Team consider a test of change initiative whereby service users could examine the accessibility of the website;

With regards to Baseline Setting, Mr Munro advised that the Board would have to prepare an annual performance report as per S9A of the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005 and highlighted the development of a performance management framework would be dependent on the formatting of the SLP and guidance received from the Scottish Government. Forum members noted that it would be important to develop indicators that were relevant and measurable; and allowed performance to be compared on a year to year basis and with other Licensing Boards. Mr Munro informed the Forum that direct comparisons with other Boards would be methodologically challenging due to the different policies adopted throughout Scotland and noted that at present the Legal Licensing team did not have a dedicated performance analyst within their team to quality check, monitor and analyse data on an ongoing basis.

With regards to Board Decisions, the Convener spoke of his perception that issues raised at Board meetings were not always reflected in the conditions of the license and he pointed to applicants volunteering to abide by certain conditions or restrictions during presentations to the Board which were subsequently not included within the Board’s decision. Mr Munro advised that as part of the SLP refresh they would be reviewing decision making procedures to increase the clarity of the process. He added that all licenses had to meet mandatory conditions and some had to meet additional local conditions which were at the discretion of the Board to include within the conditions of a license;

With regards to Distance Between Premises/Shelf Space, Mr Munro explained that there may not be sufficient time to integrate these conditions into the interim Overprovision Policy but advised that they would be considered during the review of the next SLP; and

With regards to Surveys, Mr Munro confirmed that community councils were statutory consultees for all new licenses and variations to existing licenses. He advised that the weight placed on an applicant’s survey of community support would be for each Board member to determine but emphasised compliance with the SLP was mandatory.

The Forum Resolved

(i)        to note the information provided;

(ii)       to request an update on the implementation of an interim Overprovision Policy and the development of a new SLP at the Forum’s meeting on 6 September 2017; and

(iii)      to thank Mr Munro for his correspondence and participation at today’s meeting.