Scottish Government releases consultation responses on Occasional Licences (December 2019)

The Scottish Government has today issued a summary of the consultation responses with respect to Occasional Licences. This consultation came about as a result of two key drivers: (a) are the fees for occasional licences to low; and (b) is there evidence of the occasional licence process being abused? The summary of responses draws down on both of these points.

Occasional Licence Fees

The current fee is £10 and this has been the case since 1 September 2009. Under the old 1976 Act regime the fees were actually £17 for the equivalent licence. The licensing system is, it is suggested, supposed to be self-funding meaning fees should be set according to the amount of work that the licensing authority has to put in to process them. The flip side of that coin is that licensing authorities should not "profiteer". The system should be cost-neutral. But is clear that £10 for an occasional licence attracts considerable opprobrium.

An occasional licence could cover a small community event like a PTA cheese and wine charity event, to a large music festival in a field somewhere. It is a not a great leap of logic to see why some question the fee when the licence can relate to a massive event involving multiple agencies. The Government has proposed that the fee might be increased, to say £25, £50, £75 or £100. Many local authority respondees have argued for the highest amount and have provided evidence as to the costs they incur in processing these licences. A number of small local charities and local organisations have raised concerns about whether they can afford any increase at all.

It is now for the Scottish Government to take this forward but for my money, the answer is surely somewhere in the middle. I think most people in the licensing community accept that £10 is too low and we see and understand that a lot of work can go into to an occasional licence. But we must not put off the ability for one-off local events such as charity fundraisers or arts events to seek an occasional licence as doing so might harm the community, and these events are very often not about the sale of alcohol but some wider social aim and the bar is ancillary.

Whilst it is not for me to propose a particular fee, I would be happy to see a graded scale apply. This might be achieved by reference to the type of event or applicant, such as discounted rate for charities or not-for-profit local organisations. It might also be achieved by reference to capacity. If the occasional licence is to cater for 20 people in a church hall to run a tomobola and have a glass of wine, perhaps the cost might be less than where the licence is for a 3 day music festival with 10,000 tickets sold and international music acts as headliners. There is precedence for a "capacity" approach under the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 where a number of licensing authorities will change the fee for a public entertainment licence depending on the numbers of people attending.

Occasional Licence "Abuse"

A number of the consultation responses refer to what you might call "occasional licence abuse" which is where an operator runs on a number of consecutive occasional licences instead of applying for a full premises licence. It is clear that there is some harmony in the responses both from legitimate licensed premises operators who are concerned about other people "gaming the system" when they have gone to the expense of the full licence, as well as from licensing authority staff who feel that this approach is not in the spirit of the legislation. There is suggestion from alcohol health campaigners that premises licence and personal licence applicants should be restricted to the number of occasional licence applications they can make along the same lines of existing restrictions placed on voluntary organisations.

A common sense approach must apply here and any change must be proportionate and recognise multiple occasional licence users who are not trying to avoid the full licence process. It cannot be right that genuine businesses such as external catering companies or event organisers could be limited in the amount of events they cater for or run. That would be a disproportionate and unnecessary restraint of trade for legitimate businesses. 

Even placing a restriction on the number of occasional licences that might be granted for a single set of premises threatens to block legitimate hospitality businesses such as where an unlicensed premises like a community hall is used on an ongoing basis but for different events run by different operators.

In my view any change to the occasional licence system must recognise this type of offer and it would be wholly unreasonable to force an external caterer or events company to only run a limited number of events each year. Such businesses would no longer exist under such a system.

Next Steps

If the Government is to legislate here, it is likely this will be done by of secondary legislation and a statutory instrument could be brought forward in 2020.