Licensing Act 2003

There is no renewal process. Licensees send in a cheque to fund inspection and enforcement, but no other action is required of them or the licensing authority. In the next 10 years, the Act will save the industry about £2 billion. I accept that there is an up-front cost, which we do not seek to minimise—it was included in our calculations for the £2 billion. As the industry asked us, we front-loaded the application process so that licensees do not need to return every time that they wish to put on an event. The current law is inflexible and archaic, and it fails to deal with concerns that we share with our constituents about antisocial behaviour. The only sanction that we have against a pub that is causing problems is closure. Magistrates are naturally reluctant to use that, because it is the nuclear option. Only 0.2 per cent of pubs failed to secure a licence renewal last year.