Agenda item - Chair's Communications

23.1    The Chair provided the following updates:

          Licensing Reviews

23.2    Whilst both Pride 2020 and the interim report on the review of the Statement of Licensing Policy would be discussed as part of the agenda, the Chair stated that she wanted to acknowledge the work done by both officers and members in dealing with a number of challenging licensing reviews over the last few weeks. This had culminated in an ongoing interim review of a licensed premises involved with serious disorder. The action taken by the licensing authority showed how seriously issues which undermined the licensing objectives were taken. The Chair referred to the fact that in response to a recent summary review application made by the Police under S53A of the Licensing Act 2003 that the exceptional decision had been taken to suspend the licence of a premises associated with serious disorder with immediate effect pending a full review.

          LGA Annual Licensing Conference

23.3    The Chair stated that she also wanted to mention that Councillor Lizzie Deane, Jim Whitelegg and herself had attended the LGA Licensing Conference in February. It had been an extremely useful and interesting day and had served to highlight the trail blazing policies and initiatives which were in place in the city, that were only just being adopted elsewhere in the country, such as mapping of crime statistics linked with alcohol in an area, hospital admissions etc., right down to the street an incident had occurred in, she wished to place on record her thanks to the team that provided that information. That said it had been useful to learn from similar health related licensing schemes and best practice initiatives. It had also been useful to see that some towns and cities were trying to encourage non-alcohol events, premises in their city centres.

          Members Training

23.4    Members Training had taken place in February and had included a session on the licensing application process, decision making, making representations and the hearing protocol, as well as looking at our special policy on cumulative impact. The training session had been well attended and lots of questions had been asked. Jim Whitelegg and Rebecca Sidell were thanked for organising the event and for their  presentations on the day.

23.5    RESOLVED – That the content of the Chair’s Communications be noted and received.