Unfinished business: An evaluation of the Licensing Act 2003

New licensing laws came into operation in England and Wales in November 2005, opening the way for 24 hour drinking. Two years on, the Government published its assessment of how the legislation is working. Here, Marion Roberts gives her own assessment.

Wednesday 5th March 2008 saw the publication of the first Government review of the impact of the Licensing Act 2003¹. The early morning news reports highlighted a ‘mark’ of 7/10, apparently produced by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, for the ‘success’ of the Act². This somewhat triumphal assessment had been upstaged the night before by a statement from Sir Simon Milton, Chairman of the Local Government Association and leader of Westminster City Council, who dubbed the Act a ‘catastrophic’ mistake that had ‘failed miserably’ to change Britain’s drinking culture³. The media debate was therefore effectively framed in simplistic terms: modest success versus catastrophic failure.

When the Ministerial statement and the report that prompted it were made available a more balanced and mixed picture emerged. The DCMS evaluation, as would be expected from contemporary government, relentlessly emphasised the positive. No, 24 hour drinking was not the norm, licensing hours for on-licensed premises had increased by only 21 minutes on average and overall alcohol consumption had decreased rather than increased. Crimes involving violence had not increased in the evening and the night. Somewhat refreshingly the ministerial statement went on to report the negatives, highlighting the finding that alcohol related crime had increased between the hours of 3 am and 6 am and some locations had seen an overall increase in disorder. Drinking cultures had not changed on the one hand, but on the other, there had been no significant detrimental impact on live music performances. The media debate that followed focused on the issues of binge drinking, underage drinkers and pricing controls. The Government argued that the Licensing Act 2003 was only the beginning and that further action would be taken through tougher enforcement against licensees, shopkeepers and disorderly drinkers, better management of venues and town centres and voluntary agreements with the industry.

Although the debate was more reasoned than that surrounding the implementation of the Act two years earlier, some key observations were not made and several questions were left unanswered. To begin with, the evaluation of the crime statistics was judged against forecasts of steep rises in crime made by Chief Police Officers in January 2005 and reported in the Daily Mail’s ‘campaign’ against the Act. A more reasonable evaluation would have taken the original rationale for removing permitted hours proposed by the Better Regulation Taskforce report⁴ that preceded the White Paper⁵. This argued that doing away with permitted hours would in itself reduce crime and disorder and promote a more ‘relaxed drinking style’. Quite clearly this has not happened, for the very reasons that critics of the Licensing Bill made at the time: that in the 1990s venue sizes became larger and concentrations of licensed premises increased. The complaints made by the police then, that their resources would be stretched further into the night, were reiterated in ACPO’s response to the Evaluation report.

Evaluation of the Act suffered because, as with most ‘before’ and ‘after’ investigations of urban situations, precise impacts are difficult to isolate. Not only are changes made in anticipation of legislation, but other external influences, such as policing, change simultaneously. It is therefore not surprising that the legislation appears to have had little impact on behaviour or practices.

At the time of the Act’s implementation much was made of local residents’ potential for representation in licensing hearings. As Phil Hadfield pointed out in his excellent account of the Bill’s passage through Parliament, this was somewhat disingenuous given that the first draft of the Licensing Bill had effectively excluded residents from having influence and concessions were wrung out of the Government as the Guidance to the Act went through successive iterations⁶. The Evaluation quite properly points to the successes for residents and councillors in the transfer of responsibility to local authorities, but does not fully consider the problems that residents still have to face with regard to appeals and reviews. The burden that is placed on local residents and councillors to monitor applications requires a constant vigilance that may be beyond the means of some localities.

The concept of designating cumulative impact zones or ‘special policy areas’ was reluctantly conceded as the Bill passed into law. Attempts by the ODPM Select Committee to agree a further clause that would allow local authorities to set guidelines for an upper limit of licensed premises in any one locality were rejected on the grounds of restricting trade⁷. It is somewhat ironic then to see that the Ministerial statement now suggests local authorities and the police should identify ‘hotspots’, exercise more caution and conditions when issuing licenses in those areas and even allow the ‘wholesale withdrawal’ of licenses.

The reform of licensing law opened up an opportunity to simplify and streamline legislation, but if a more radical approach had been adopted, some genuine ‘joined up’ thinking could have been produced. The two systems, licensing and planning, were separate, even though planning legislation can impose conditions on premises’ hours and operation. A thorough reform of licensing legislation could have combined the two systems through one process for certain types of license application, thereby permitting a more holistic approach to forward planning and fulfilling the early objectives spelt out in ‘Time for Reform’, namely to make the centres of our towns and cities more pleasant. As it is, our own research at the University of Westminster⁸ found that in certain boroughs, wily lawyers were finding ways of playing off planning and licensing to achieve later hours.

There are more problems that are coming to light. One of the most pressing is that rather than encouraging ‘family friendly’ venues, the Act has unwittingly permitted an expansion in the numbers of lapdancing or ‘gentlemans’ clubs. Unwanted expansion has been reported in Brighton, Tower Hamlets and Durham. A campaign, ‘Object’ has been set up in opposition⁹, with action research funded by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust. It is to be hoped that Government will soon take action to rectify this situation.

So, was the Licensing Act 2003 a modest success or a catastrophic failure? Perhaps the verdict of history will be neither of these, but more of a lost opportunity for more profound and genuinely radical reform.

References:

1 DCMS (2008) Evaluation of the Impact of the Licensing Act 2003 [http://www.culture.gov.uk/Reference_library/Publications/
archive_2008/ evaluation_licensing_act_impact.htm]

2 www.politics.co.uk/issueoftheday/opinion-formerindex/ communities-and-local-government/24-hourdrinking-$ 1209319$1209319.htm

3 Winnett, R. Council Leaders attack 24-hour drinking laws The Daily Telegraph,4th March 2008. [www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/ 2008/03/03/nbooze103.xml]

4 Cabinet Office (1998) Better Regulation Taskforce: Licensing Regulation London: The Cabinet Office

5 Department for Culture Media and Sport (2001) Time for Reform: Proposals for the modernisation of our licensing laws (White Paper) CM4696.

6 Hadfield, P. (2006) Bar Wars: Contesting the Night in Contemporary British Cities Oxford, Oxford University Press.

7 House of Commons (2003) Government Response to the Committee's Sixth Report on the Licensing Bill (Lords) and the Evening Economy, (Ed, ODPM: Housing, P., Local Government and the Regions Committee) The Stationery Office, London.

8 Roberts, M. & Eldridge A. (2007) Expecting 'Great Things'? The Impact of the Licensing Act 2003 on Democratic Involvement, Dispersal and Drinking Cultures,University of Westminster [www.ias.org.uk/ resources/ukreports/cci/cci-0707.pdf]

9 For further information please contact Sandrine Levêque at sandrine@object.org.uk

Professor Marion Roberts is the Director of the Central Cities Institute at the University of Westminster