Officials braced for booze licences rush

BAR bosses could see their pubs run dry unless they meet a nine-day deadline to sort out new licences – even if they do not want to apply for later drinking hours.
Around 70 per cent of Camden’s pubs and clubs are facing the ultimate disaster of being stripped of the right to sell booze – simply because landlords have not filled out new licensing forms.
The rigid requirement is part of the government’s new licensing rules.
Pub bosses have had since February to convert to the new system but so far only around 520 of the borough’s 1,700 venues have responded.
While some venues have taken advantage of the changeover to ask for later opening hours, hundreds more look set to miss the August 6 deadline for applications.
Camden Council’s licensing department is hold-ing panel hearings everyday to hammer out new hours for the pubs that have already switched over to the new system.
But the growing backlog of work is likely to get worse, very quickly.
Officials are bracing themselves for a last-minute panic as licensees scramble to beat the looming cut-off date. It is a scenario the Town Hall had hoped to avoid but a series of pleas to have a steady flow of applications has been ignored. Pubs in danger of missing out include a string of bars in drinking hotspots such as Camden Town and Covent Garden where big breweries compete for custom.
If landlords are to avoid losing their licences, the rate of applications must leap from what has been a trickle of completed forms that has arrived at the Town Hall since the new system began earlier this year.
A series of warnings from the council have seemingly been ignored. Stephen Leonard, head of the Town Hall’s licensing team, spelt out the potential crisis on Tuesday. He told licensees: “If you apply after 6 August 2005, you will lose your existing rights. The new Licensing Law will come into full force on Thursday November 24. Those who do not have a licence under the Licensing Act 2003 by then will not be able to trade. Applications to convert and vary licences that are received after August 6 will be rejected.”
Leaving it late carries the extra risk that if bar owners submit incomplete documents, there will be no time for them to take them away and correct them.
Landlords who fall foul of the deadline will lose their licences, the right to serve alcohol and have to start over by applying for a brand new licence. There will be no temporary measures to allow them to keep trading while they bid for a new licence.
Mr Leonard added: “Pubs and clubs will have to apply for an entirely new premises licence. Accordingly, we strongly recommend licence holders make their applications to convert their existing before the August 6 deadline.”