Minister for Fire and Police (): The Government is today
launching a consultation on alcohol licensing regulatory
easements. Our objective is to support businesses as they deal
with ongoing economic and financial challenges and the effects of
the pandemic, cutting red tape whilst making sure that local
authorities can recover their costs without an additional burden
on central government finances.
The Licensing Act 2003 allows premises licence holders to sell
alcohol for consumption on site, off site or both. The holder of
an on-sales licence can apply to their Licensing Authority for a
variation if they wish to add off-sales to their licence.
Provisions in the Business and Planning Act 2020 enabled on-sales
premises licence holders to automatically also do off-sales,
without any need to amend their licence.
The Licensing Act 2003 also allows licensable activities to be
carried out on a one-off basis without the need for a premises
licence or any other authorisation, by means of a temporary event
notice. Provisions in the Business and Planning Act 2020
temporarily increased the annual number of Temporary Event
Notices that a licensed premise user can have in respect of a
premises from 15 to 20.
We are consulting to understand whether there is support for
making the regulatory easements permanent, in some form, or
whether to return to the provisions in the Licensing Act. We will
at the same time carry out a survey of local authorities so that
we can better understand their actual costs for processing and
enforcing licensing legislation.
The consultation will run for eight weeks and the Government will
publish its response in early summer 2023. We intend to make any
changes related to the consultation as soon as parliamentary time
allows thereafter. A copy of the consultation will be placed in
the Libraries of both Houses and published on Gov.UK.
