Agenda and draft minutes

Councillor Payter-Harris was duly elected to chair this meeting.

There were no declarations of prejudicial or pecuniary interests.  Councillor Fazackarley declared that he is an employee of ASDA when mention was made of the company, but not of the store referred to in Fratton.

The purpose of the report by the Licensing Manager is for the committee to consider an application for the variation of a premises licence pursuant to section 35 of the Licensing Act 2003 ("the Act").

The matter has been referred to the committee for determination following receipt of relevant representations from two local residents.

The committee is requested to determine the variation application.

(The panel followed the procedure for the hearing of Licensing Act 2003 Applications by Other Persons only)

Derek Stone, Principal Licensing Officer, presented the Licensing Manager's report, explaining the background to the hearing with representations made by 2 local residents against the proposed extension in hours, but not by Responsible Authorities.  Appendix D set out the previous history of decisions relating to the premises.  Mr Stone reported that the Licensing Team had been proactive and had visited the premises on 8^th December 2018 at 00.25 hrs to carry out a test purchase and were refused to be sold alcohol past midnight.

There were no members' or applicant's questions to the Principal Licensing Officer at this stage.

Questions by other persons (residents) - Mr Barrow asked for an explanation regarding the strength of alcohol of items not being sold.  Mr Stone reported that products above 6.5% (unless premium products, such as specialist ales) would not be sold.  (This was set out on p19 of the report.)

The applicant's case (for Mr Jeevanayagiam who apologised for not being able to attend) was presented by Mr Jon Wallsgrove, as his solicitor. His points included:

·         There had been no Responsible Authority representations to the extension to 2am and only 2 representations from local residents

·         The residents' objections were based on occurrences from 10 years ago but the applicant disputed that the shop was linked to instances of crime and disorder locally

·         There was no intention to apply for a 24 hour licence

·         There had been an exchange of information with PC Rackham regarding crime statistics locally and in the opinion of the police there would not be an impact by granting the extension in hours to 2am

·         Both the police and the Director of Public Health (who had not submitted an objection this time, having discussed this with the police) had not objected and both were experts in their respective fields, as defined in paragraph 9.12 of the statutory guidance (referenced page 4 of the report)

·         The panel's decision should be evidence based (statutory guidance para 9.43)

·         The steps that the applicant was willing to take were outlined, most of which were already in place apart from the door stewards who were proposed for Friday and Saturday evenings (an agreed condition with the police)

·         the applicant had voluntarily agreed not to stock high alcohol products (whereas local competitors were selling these)

·         There is a particular problem with one person who buying drink elsewhere in the vicinity

·         The premises had been operating 10 years without issues or breaches of the conditions of licence, with the allegation of out of hours sales being proved untrue by the recent test purchase

Questions by the panel members covered the following matters:

·         What was the intention of providing the police statistics? Mr Wallsgrove responded that these had been provided by the police as experts who did not conclude that an extension to 2am would make these figures worse and the risk of impact was minimal

·         Had the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 82.