Licensing Act 2003

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) for keeping his speech brief and giving me an opportunity to address the House. I have discussed the issue with the Minister on previous occasions because, unlike the constituents of the hon. Member for West Bromwich, West (Mr. Bailey), two categories of people in my area have been inadvertently affected, including small, independent publicans. Much of the Licensing Act 2003 appears to have been drafted to allow major pub-owning groups to comply with the immense additional bureaucracy that, as I have seen for myself, is involved in the initial application. I appreciate that the application may not have to be repeated, but for a publican operating on his own, perhaps with the help of his wife—many of the pubs that are still going in villages in my rural constituency are run in that way—the prospect of having to complete a 77-page application is overwhelming. In a village near Bridgnorth that I shall not name for fear of precipitating problems, the publican is in the throes of deciding whether to carry on, given the challenge of completing the application form, not least the requirement to provide a seating plan of his pub. For what purpose? What on earth has that got to do with having a licence or not having a licence? There may be other health and safety reasons, such as fire regulations, for providing a seating plan showing the position of the chairs, but that has nothing to do with a licence. That is one category about which I am concerned. As the Minister is present, I want to raise an issue that was touched on by the hon. Member for Caernarfon—small guest houses. He mentioned bed and breakfasts in his constituency. We have a number of small guest houses in some of the towns in my constituency. I am thinking particularly of Church Stretton, an area that is trying to attract rural tourism. A number of the small houses there might have two or three bedrooms for use as bed-and-breakfast accommodation. They have a licence for the sale of the odd bottle of wine. The Minister said that the legislation would save money for these licence holders. At present a three-year licence costs £30. The licensees now face a tenfold increase in the cost of obtaining a licence. If they are selling only a few bottles of wine a year, I am told they will not bother to carry on doing so. So the Act may reduce the services available to the tourists in the area, making it less attractive and reducing economic activity. My constituent who runs The Studio restaurant in Church Stretton was unfortunate enough to go up a rateable value band as a result of the change in the rateable valuation. As a result, his fee will increase not just by 10 times the current charge, but more like 20 times, from £30 to £730 for no reason whatsoever, other than that his rateable value just tipped him over into band B. The second category, village halls, has been mentioned by many hon. Members. Rather than quote at length from the raft of examples raised with me by village hall committees, I shall pick up two points to illustrate the financial viability question posed by the legislation and a point about TENs. Brian Wilkes, who is the chairman of the Cleobury North and district village hall committee, tells me that the village hall"““is run entirely by volunteers and last year the income was less than £3,000, with expenses of £3,600. The difference was met by donations and fundraising. We are applying for a new licence under ‘grandfather rights’, however this would restrict us as we would only be allowed 12 licensed events each year.””" He is concerned that the committee will not be able to put on sufficient events to meet its costs. The other example comes from Mrs. Mollie Oatley MBE, who is the secretary to the management committee of the Newcastle community centre, which is a thriving centre but has running costs of £10,000 per annum. At present the licence is provided by the village publican, Mr. Tony Burton of the Crown Inn, who runs the community bar and provides the profits as a contribution towards the hall. Because the committee has to hold so many events in order to meet its costs, the 12 permits allowed under the temporary events notice are insufficient, so the committee is contemplating having a full premises licence to allow 50 licensed events per annum. The problem is that Mr. Burton, as the first point of contact, is not prepared to undertake responsibility for that number of occasions during the year. As a consequence, he is proposing to pull out of the arrangement with the community centre and none of the other trustees are prepared to take it on. The point is a serious one, which I hope the Minister will address in his concluding remarks.