Public Health England - a public health licensing objective and other considerations

In 2016, with the support of the Home Office and Department of Health, Public Health England developed and piloted an analytical support package (ASP) to:

• help public health teams in their existing role as a responsible authority as defined in the Licensing Act
• explore the data and processes that would support a theoretical public health licensing objective

A follow up report just issued:

• explores the experience of pilot areas using the ASP tool
• presents findings from the project
• presents how the pilot areas engaged with the ASP in attempting to improve public health’s engagement with alcohol licensing

It can be found here: 'Alcohol Support Package'

The report concludes that there are ongoing challenges and areas of improvement which can be framed under three domains:

• Operational - The capacity of public health teams to engage in alcohol licensing work and the analytical capacity to work with data.
• Skills - The ability of public health teams to present health data in a format and context that licensing committees can assimilate in their decision making process. The ability of those in licensing to understand and make the best use of public health’s contribution to promoting the licensing objectives.
• A public health licensing objective - Even with the four current objectives, the absence of a specific public health licensing objective was seen by many participants in the project to be a barrier to public health’s role, with some arguing that its absence diminished public health’s standing as a responsible authority.

Of course on the last point the recent House of Lords review into the workings of the Licensing Act 2003 did not find any favour with the adoption of such an objective.