Meeting documents

To approve the minutes of the Licensing Committee held on 21 June 2018.

The minutes of the Licensing Committee held on 21 June 2018 were approved and signed by the Chairman as a correct record. 

There were no declarations of interest.

Members received a report on the outcome of the consultation on the revised Gambling Act 2005 Statement of Principles so that they could consider the responses received so that the draft Statement of Principles could be recommended to Cabinet and Full Council for adoption. Section 349 of the 2005 Act required all licensing authorities to prepare and publish a statement of the principles that they intend to apply in exercising their functions under the 2005 Act.

The Licensing Manager reported that three responses had been received during the consultation period which had lasted six weeks, these were attached at Appendix 2, the first of which was from GamCare advising that although they did not have the resources to comment on an individual Council’s Statement of Principles, they had provided some general guidance and information to be considered. Members were informed that no changes were proposed as a result of the information provided by GamCare as the draft Statement of Principles already included information in accordance with the guidance and information. It was also considered more appropriate to have information and web links on the Council’s website to signpost residents to organisations such as GamCare.

The second response received was from The Bingo Association which raised concerns with Part B, Section 6 of the draft Statement relating to the number of category B3 gaming machines on bingo premises. The Bingo Association’s response was correct in that pursuant to The Gambling Act 2005 (Gaming Machines in Adult Gaming Centres and Bingo Premises) Order 2011, no numerical limit to B3 machines could be imposed, therefore reference to this should be removed from the draft Statement of Principles.

The final response was from Gosschalks Solicitors on behalf of the Association of British Bookmakers. The majority of the response provided contained general guidance and no changes were proposed as a result of these as it was already adequately addressed in the draft Statement. However, there were some specific areas which were referred to below:- :

§    The response stated that the Statement of Principles referred to the Council ‘promoting’ the licensing objectives, whereas there was no duty for the Council to do so under the Act. Having looked at the sections in which the promotion of the objectives was mentioned, it was not viewed as being inconsistent with the 2005 Act and as such no changes were proposed.

§    The next comment related to a new section of the draft Statement of Principles regarding local area risk assessments (Part B, section 2). The draft Statement of Principles proposed a list of factors that the Council expected operators to consider as part of the risk assessment process. The consultation response raised issue with the bullet points relating to areas of deprivation and levels of unemployment. It was suggested that the section of the report was reworded to remove direct references to these matters whilst retaining the essence of what was intended. It was therefore proposed by officers that the bullet points were amended to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 24.