Scotland - Personal Licence Revocations - the race to surrender - and Glasgow!

Following our recent item on the ‘race to surrender' personal licences otherwise likely to be revoked for previous non-compliance with retraining requirements, Glasgow Licensing Board has just issued a very useful clarification of their position on personal licences currently capable of revocation.

The full statement, issued by Peter Smith, Development & Information Officer (Licensing), follows but at its simplest, those Glasgow personal licence holders who have failed to comply with either limb of their refresher training requirement have until Monday 15 December 2014 at 5pm to surrender their personal licence to avoid a 5 year ban or re-application; otherwise those licences will be revoked at 5.00pm on that date.

‘The Board has identified 1250 Personal Licence Holders that have failed to provide the required notification by 30 November and of these 1250 individuals, 100 are also DPMs for Licensed Premises in Glasgow. The affected licensed premises have been written to in order to advise of the need to intimate a new Premises Manager.

This Licensing Board agrees with the consensus opinion that a Board is required to take a proactive step to revoke a licence and that revocation is not simply a tacit action of the failure to notify.

If a Personal Licence Holder does not produce their notification within the statutory timescale then there is no action available to them to cure the defect that will result in revocation of their Licence - however there are still able to surrender their licence if the Licensing Board has not yet taken the proactive step to revoke their Licence.

In Glasgow the procedural approach will be to prepare a list of Personal Licence Holders who, as of a specified date, have failed to comply with section 87 of the 2005 Act. This list will be signed by the Clerk/Depute Clerks under delegated powers and affect the revocation of the relevant Personal Licences as of 5pm on the date on which the list is signed.

To be clear: In Glasgow no "delegated list" has yet been signed; we have not yet revoked any Personal Licences under section 87(3) and no letters have yet been sent to Personal Licence Holders advising that their licence has been revoked. To date, all we have done is identify the 1250 Personal Licence Holders whose licence will be revoked.

The Board is in a position to revoke these licences. However, taking into account the emerging picture of "Black Monday" and in particularly the very real impact on businesses and individuals, the Glasgow Board has determined that these Personal Licences affected by the 30 November deadline will now be revoked on Monday 15 December 2014 at 5pm. If you have clients who are impacted by the 30 November deadline and have not yet elected to surrender their licence then such surrenders can be made until 5pm Monday 15 December.

Moving forward, the general position will be as outlined above - i.e. Personal Licences can be surrendered up to the point where the Board takes a proactive step to the revoke the licence.'