Licensing Committee, and some new Policies

The Licensing Committee of Rochford Council met a couple of weeks ago to discuss new Licensing and Gambling Policies, these had to be reviewed as they had become out of date with changes in legislation and the Agenda and Draft Policies can be seen here.

The meeting discussed the new draft Licensing Policy first and I raised the Policy at paragraph 1.81 which reads

The Licensing Authority, having regard to the evidence currently available, considers that there is no particular part of the District causing a cumulative impact on any of the licensing objectives.

I raised this as I thought Rayleigh may well meet this criteria and was becoming the default place to drink with the number of drinking establishments in Rayleigh now starting to cause a real problem in the area, in other words I felt that there was a cumulative impact.

I was supported by other Councillors in this and it was decided

 That, subject to officers exploring the possibility of including a saturation policy, the draft licensing policy statement be approved for commencement of public consultation.

That was the only change to the policy and I’m pleased to say that a cumulative impact policy (saturation) is being included in the document.  This means that any new applicant within the area (Rayleigh) will have to demonstrate that the new license will not add to existing problems.

There was little change to the Gambling Policy, mainly because there is new legislation coming in which we will need to take account of therefore just a few changes were made which kept it up to date and which the Committee agreed.

Both Policies should be out for consultation from 3 August and I will keep residents advised.