LICENSING PITFALLS: the importance of training.
Under the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005 and the Criminal Justice & Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 it is more important than ever to ensure that every single person who sells alcohol – whether in a pub or nightclub or a hotel or restaurant or a supermarket or other off-sales premises or in a club – has undergone the relevant training.
This training can be given by any Personal Licence holder or by a training provider (such as Reid Kerr College). Written records of the training must be kept. The Licensing Standards Officer will visit the premises and ask to see these records.
Inadequate (or non-existent) training can result in (a) selling to under-age drinkers, (b) pouring short measures, (c) serving customers who are already drunk, (d) failing to deal properly with incidents arising on the premises, (e) being unaware of the details of the Layout Plan and Operating Plan for the premises and (f) being unaware of the notices which must be displayed on the premises, namely, the notice about not serving alcohol to under-18s and the notice about the arrangements on these premises for children and young persons. (And there will be a need to be familiar with further notices – about age verification – when the Alcohol etc. (Scotland) Act 2010 kicks in on 1st October 2011.)
Such errors and failures could result in the Premises Licence being subject to a Review Hearing, when the Licensing Board could (a) issue a warning, (b) suspend the Licence for a period (typically between 1 week and 6 months) or (c) revoke the licence.
Even a short suspension could be extremely damaging to business. If you are unfortunate enough to be cited to a Review Hearing, HUNTER & ROBERTSON can provide you with expert representation with a view to avoiding or mitigating any adverse decision by the Board. Your contact is John Armit.
Prevention is, of course, better than cure, so do make sure that all staff are thoroughly trained.
Further cause for concern comes in the shape of that part of the Criminal Justice & Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 which reintroduces the concept of vicarious liability: where a member of staff commits an offence (such as selling outwith the permitted hours or selling to a child or young person or serving someone who is drunk) while acting as agent or employee of the holder of the Premises Licence, the holder of the Premises Licence is also guilty UNLESS he/she can show that he/she did not know the offence was being committed AND can show that he/she exercised all due diligence to prevent the offence being committed. HUNTER & ROBERTSON can give advice on what is required to establish this defence. (The bar is set quite high!).
Yet another worry for holders of Premises Licences comes with a recent decision in an English court case (which might well be followed here in Scotland). If a customer in licensed premises is harmed by another customer who has become unruly, the holder of the Premises Licence can, depending on the circumstances, be held to be in breach of a duty of care to his/her customers and can thus be sued for damages! Another reason to ensure that staff are thoroughly trained! They must be able to spot a “situation” developing and be able to de-fuse it.