Alcohol licensing: a guide for public health teams issued

Public Health England has produced a guide to health teams to ‘make sure that licensing policy and applications consider the health and wellbeing of local communities’.

The guidance is intended to inform on how directors of public health, who have been included as Responsible Authorities under the Licensing Act since 2013, can actively engage in the licensing process

It indicates that:

‘Public health teams may have access to information that is unavailable to other responsible authorities, which can help the licensing authority make decisions that benefit and protect the health and wellbeing of local communities.

As a responsible authority public health teams can:

• provide information on the likely effects of the grant or variation of a premises licence or club premises certificate
• support or apply a review of a premises licence or club premises certificate where problems associated with one or more of the licensing objectives arise
• contribute to the development and review of the statement of licensing policy and have a key role in identifying and interpreting health data and evidence’

If of interest, the full guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/alcohol-licensing-a-guide-for-public-health-teams