Who would have thought that Her Majesty’s Government could have put through a piece of legislation based on what looks like a cursory set of sums?
More on that later, let us look at what the provisions of The Licensing Act (Mandatory Licensing Conditions) Order 2010 has in store for us. The government wants to make all licensed activities, whether alcohol, gambling or lap dancing, to name a few, safe, legal and responsible. This is actually a very good thing, it introduces minimum standards of acceptable management to licensed activities, which in turn protects the public.
Basically sites will be required to observe a new set of mandatory conditions on their premises license. The main gist of this is to discourage irresponsible licensees from encouraging unhealthy drinking practises or causing drunkeness and antisocial behaviour.
The new conditions will be:
1 Stopping any irresponsible promotions. This effectively bans; time and quantity based alcohol promotions, large discounts or freebies to encourage drinking, drinks for the winning goal etc
2 You cannot pour drinks into someone elses mouth, unless they need assistance due to disablility.
3 Free tap water has to be available on request.
4 An age verification policy exists.
5 Smaller alcohol measures must be available and customers aware of this. eg 125ml for wine, 25ml or 35ml for wine and 1/2 pints for beers and ciders.
Items 1-3 are required by 6th April 2010, 4 and 5 by 1st October 2010. The key issues with this new legislation is down to the assumptions made over the costs related to each change. An accounting firm was paid to do work on this and I wonder who did the calculations from them. Apparently there is a cost of, wait for it, £13 per licensed premises for the provision of tap water …. per year. Which divides down to 25 pence per week. Now lets consider wine, if sold at less than full bottle, £37 per year. The costs seem to be concerned with just the staff time and bar ware required to effect each change. Nowhere is it mentioned:
1 The opportunity cost of not selling bottled water if you are operating in a fine dining environment.
2 Additional ullage costs of providing higher priced wines only available at large glass / carafe measure in smaller glasses which lead to additional waste.
3 Errors made by the extra set of options on the till or from decisions over which measure to grab from the bar on a busy night.
The emphasis of the study behind this has not taken into consideration such venues as wine bars, bistros, cafes and restaurants. These are mandatory conditions, so they will be coming to a license near you soon.