Advertising applications - the law clarified (again)

The Licensing Act 2003 and number of its accompanying regulations make it a requirement that certain licensing applications be advertised – whether by notice displayed at the premises, in a locally circulated newspaper and/or on the Licensing Authority’s website.

One such obligation is for Licensing Authorities to advertise Review applications on their website and it is being reported that in Mu Mu Enterprises v North Somerset District Council (2013) the Licensing Authority failed to discharge this duty but determined to proceed with the hearing in any regard.

The operator successfully appealed this point, which notably resulted in the Review proceedings being declared void.

In order to avoid such a situation arising, it would therefore be prudent for applicants and/or Licensing Authorities to check that licensing application notices are timely and properly displayed on Licensing Authority websites although failure by a Licensing Authority to properly advertise a Review application may well work in the operator’s favour as it did in the above case.

In an unconnected but related development, there was a debate in Parliament last week over the need to advertise these and other applications in the local press; there has been a suggestion that the Government may be amenable to relax this requirement as part of wider de-regulation.  From a reading of the debate, this did not appear to find much favour with the financial contribution which such advertising makes to the viability of local newspapers a more pressing concern!  Someone suggested that the public notice pages are the second most read pages after obituaries!  For my part, I am not so sure.

Should you have any queries about the above, please contact one of our solicitors.