 Good morning and welcome to the sixth meeting of the committee in 2015. Everyone present is asked to switch off mobile phones and other electronic devices as they interfere with the broadcasting system. Some committee members will refer to tablets during the course of the meeting, that's because we provide papers in digital format. Agenda item 1 is on air weapons and licensing Scotland bill. This is our eighth oral evidence session on this bill. Today, we are taking evidence from witnesses from local authority licensing bodies in relation to general licensing provision. Before we start, can I point out that witnesses don't need to press the buttons on their microphones? They will be operated by the sound engineer. I would like to welcome Andrew Mitchell, community safety manager, City of Edinburgh Council and Peter Smith, senior licensing officer, Glasgow City Council. Gentleman, would you like to make any opening remarks and maybe in those opening remarks you could tell us a little bit about your jobs? Mr Smith? First of all, on behalf of Glasgow City Council, I'd like to extend our thanks once again to the committee. My role within the council's licensing team is to oversee the service delivery aspect of the business to ensure that we are delivering the correct level of service to our customers and to our communities in terms of the bill and the proposals contained within that bill. The council, as we have outlined in previous evidence sessions, is supportive of those proposals in and of themselves, but we do caveat that or qualify that by again raising the issue that we believe that the licensing system, in particular the 1982 act, is not fit for purpose as it stands and that consolidation or indeed a revision of the act altogether is required in order to improve the level of licensing service that has been delivered to the businesses and to the communities that we are serving. In terms of your role, Mr Smith? In terms of my role, I oversee service delivery within the licensing section, so that is dealing with both the legal aspect of the business and the operational side of the business in terms of dealing with agents and businesses and ensuring that applications are processed timeously and that the legal processes and the administrative processes within that role are fulfilled by the team. Good morning, thank you for inviting me along. I am the council's community safety manager. I have responsibility for the council's licensing functions from policy through to the administration of how we process applications. I am also responsible for council's regulatory functions that deal with licensed premises, including managing the licensing standards officers. I think that, in common with my colleague, the City of Edinburgh welcomes broadly what is in the bill but we take a similar view that the 1982 act probably is passed itself by date and there are quite a few other bits of legislation out there that deals with licensing that needs tidied up and brought into, we think, a consolidated act. The main issues for us, I think that you are particularly interested in the training of private higher car drivers, which we think is quite essential. We are also quite concerned about the provisions in the 2005 act relating to occasional premises and I am happy to go through any sort of detail which would help the committee in that particular regard, but generally broadly supportive of what is in the act and as far as it goes. Okay, thank you. You have both said that the 1982 act is maybe outdated and not fit for purpose any more. Would you like to point out to us what the main flaws are in that piece of legislation now and how you think that the proposed new bill will resolve some of those difficulties? I think that we have to begin by looking at the fact that the 1982 act was drafted over 30 years ago and it deals with a variety of different activities that require to be regulated from very obvious things such as taxing private higher through to the more obscure such as window cleaners or boat hire licenses. The act has served its purpose over the years, but as Scotland has moved on, as businesses changed, the provisions in the act haven't kept pace with that. The 2005 act presents probably the benchmark for how licensing should work in a 21st century Scotland and when you compare the two, the 1982 act is deficient in several areas. The lack of licensing objectives is a major concern within the 1982 act. We are charged with granting licenses, we are charged with setting conditions, but those conditions don't go as far as to place objectives on to licence holders. We may have a conditional licence to, for example, with scrap metal dealers, we may be given the power to conditionalise them so that they are non-cash payments, but that is not backed up by a requirement for the licence holder to meet objectives such as preventing crime disorder, securing public safety and it gets into the technical minutia of how the two acts work, but those lack of objectives are a major concern for us moving forward when the 2005 act creates an expectation of how licensing authorities should be dealing with businesses and we don't have the same powers under the 1982 act. When we look at specific provisions within the 1982 act, for example street trading, which was drafted in 1982 to deal with burger vans, people at football matches selling hats, scarves and badges, in a 21st century Scotland, we are having to use that legislation to regulate everything from car washes to pedicamps and it's clear that the act was never intended to regulate those activities and we are trying to work with legislation that's not intended to deal with those activities and as we continue to move on it becomes more and more apparent that the act is just not suitable for dealing with those types of things. I give the committee an example of what the public would think, so in terms of legislation moving on under the 2005 act and under planning legislation, there's quite a sophisticated system of neighbour notifications, but there is no equivalent in the 1982 act, so one of the most common complaints that we get from residents and members of the public is that premises spring up beside them and there's very little chance for them to be aware that a premise is likely to be applying for a licence before it opens, so if you take examples like that, you can see how the 1982 act, 30 years ago, now really compared to other pieces of legislation, has fallen well behind what you would expect to involve the public in terms of being aware of what's going on in their community. Okay, thank you very much. Can I maybe ask you what you consider to be the advantages and disadvantages of creating a new civic licensing standards of SIRP rule, Mr Smith? I think that the advantage is that it creates a single point of contact for communities who have concerns with activities that are licensed under the 1982 act. At the moment, there are officers within the council spread across different teams, training standards, environmental health, etc., who will deal with certain aspects of certain activities regulated under the act. There is no single point of contact for someone who has an issue with a licence premises, so creating the role, I think, is helpful for dealing with that specific issue. Though, in reality, I wouldn't be confident that every local authority would create a specific role for other licencing standards officers for civic licensing, it may be that that responsibility would simply be divided up and given to the different officers that deal with different aspects of licensing at the moment, so an environmental health officer may also environment health officer and a civic licensing officer, rather than creating an individual position, but I think that unless the provisions are put in place, we won't know if that will happen. In terms of the disadvantages, I think that the creation of this officer creates an expectation that there would be someone in the council who could deal with issues in relation to licenced premises. The reality is that the officer wouldn't be able to do that. The officer would be charged with dealing with breaches of licence conditions. Because there's no objectives under the 1982 act, if the premises is creating public nuisance in and of itself, that would not be something that a civic officer could deal with. They could only deal with a specific breach of a specific condition within the act, because there's no overriding objectives to which the business has to be adhering to. So I think that there are advantages in creating the role to give communities comfort that there's someone that they can contact, but at the same time I'm concerned that it may create a level of expectation that the local authority can deal with issues which it's not charged with dealing with. And I suppose I need to give an example to contextualise that. So if you take, for example, the idea that a street trader suddenly springs up outside your front door with a burger van, the civic officer could deal with a breach of that street trader's conditions, but they couldn't deal with the fact that the community don't want that street trader to be there or that that street trader is creating public nuisance, because there's no objective to tie that to. They could only deal with the actual physical licence conditions, which should be structured such as do they have suitable bins for any waste that they're producing or are they operating within the terms of the licence. So I have mixed feelings about the creation of this officer. Overall I think it's good, but I think in context the 1982 act there are flaws. So basically what you're saying is that the perception of the public will be, yes we have these new officers, but they're not going to be able to deliver what we want, is that what you're saying? Be able to deliver certain aspects of what people want, but they won't be able to deliver the overall service that I think the public would expect that officer to be able to deliver. But they'll be able to help the public and guide the public to dealing with objecting to licences in the future for the burger van in a specific place or whatever it may be? Well not the burger van because unfortunately with the 1982 act there's very little chance that the community would know that the burger van was going to turn up before the licence was granted. Under the new provisions, they will know, be more likely to know about licence application of said burger van. I think there's a potential they may be more likely to know, but I wouldn't say it was guaranteed under the provisions. I think that it's still coming back to what the officer will actually be able to do compared to what the expectation of what the officer will be able to do. So we might be boosting the public confidence in all of this only to dash their confidence when this becomes a reality? I think that's very well put. Mr Mitchell? I think that local authorities across the piece will take a different view on civil licencing standards officers. I think that the smaller authorities might just struggle to find the resources to create the real. My own authority we've tried to put all the expertise for dealing with it under one team and it's quite likely that we would just assign an existing officer, say like an environmental health officer, to carry out these particular functions. I think that it's important that the act does envisage a mediation role which in reality most local authorities are currently doing in order to try and resolve difficulties between the public and licence holders, but I do think that, like my colleague, there is and I don't think that the officer in itself will solve every problem under the 82 act. I think that if you go back to my point about neighbour notification, I think that it's highly unlikely that the officer that has created will resolve that difficulty to any great extent. I was interested in the burger van, not per se, but who would deal with it? If people found the police rather than to say, can we get rid of this van if it's outside the house or if it's causing a nuisance, what party would be dealing with it? That's what I was really... There is no party. This is one of the fundamental flaws of the 82 act. Once the licence is granted, unless it's a breach of condition, unless it's a criminal matter that you can involve the police with, then there's no vote for communities to say, this is a public nuisance, we want the committee to reconsider whether this application should be granted. If it was, for example, food smells, we could ask environmental health to look at it from that specific aspect of a breach of conditions, that specific aspect, but the overarching idea that if a licence is creating public nuisance can be dealt with, it can't. Under the 82 act, there's no provision to deal with that. Is Bill going to actually close that loophole? No. You would have to go back to the beginning and look at the 82 act fundamentally before you could really address those issues, and I think if you'd done that, you would probably in the end create something which is much more like the 2005 act, where many of the activities regulated under 82 could move to a model like the 2005 act or even become part of the 2005 act, and you would have a system more in line with the operation in England and Wales, where a premises licence under one licence, which is licensing multiple activities, and that's tied in to a sensible level of objectives that both the licence holder and the local authority are tied to ensuring. Without that, those problems will continue. If we continue with this act, those problems will continue. Mr Mitchell, do you want to answer that? I think in practical terms, taking that example, the only realistic opportunity that the community would have is when the licence comes up for renewal. If they become aware of the renewal, and that's a big if, they could then seek to object to that point, but unless the operation has been there for the previous year or however long, without any real problems, without any breach of conditions, I would have thought unlikely that, even at the renewal stage that the committee would take a view of that, it would be inappropriate. John Wilson, on the responses that we have heard, what would be required to be included in the new legislation that would satisfy the local authorities, Edinburgh and Glasgow and potentially other authorities throughout Scotland, to ensure that what we are actually doing is delivering the expectation of the public in making that reality, because what I'm hearing at the present moment is that, in what I've picked up from you, Mr Smith, is that the current, even the proposed bill does not go far enough to meet the expectations that we may be building up, as the community has said, in the public expectation. What do we need to do to ensure that we actually meet those expectations? Mr Smith? It would be substantial. I would almost be teaching on the brink of saying that I don't think that you could implement through this bill enough amendments to address those issues. It is fundamentally that that the 1982 act has been in place for 30 years. It's served its purpose, it's had its time, it needs to go back and be rebuilt from the ground up in line with the 2005 act, which is setting out an entirely different framework for how we approach licensing. I think that if you tried to implement the type of provisions that you would have to put into the 1982 act to implement objectives, to implement the removal of fixed-term licences and implement the review procedures which are missing so that people can bring issues to the local authority any time to implement annual fee proposals instead of the three-year fixed renewals, all the things that exist in the 2005 act within the 1982 act, it would be so substantive that you would almost be writing a new piece of legislation in doing that, which is what I would really say you have to go right back to the beginning and start again with the 1982 act to actually implement something which is fit for purpose for our modern Scotland. Mr Mitchell. I certainly agree even certainly that the Edinburgh Council's view was that introducing a form of the licensing objectives would be essential if you were going to retain the 1982 act. I think that I do take the view that the 1982 act has been amended that many times that it comes a question of how many times you can keep amending it, but again just to give you an example of how far behind other bits of legislation the 1982 act is and how it hampers local authorities dealing with problems, you can revoke a licence under liquor, you can revoke an HMO licence, you can even revoke a sex shop licence under the 1982 act, but there is no power under the 1982 act to revoke a licence. A council can suspend for the unexpired portion, but even that kind of simple saying this is a problem or the applicant has serious misconduct. There is no power under the 1982 act to revoke a licence, which is fairly fundamental in terms of licensing and it just shows you how far the 1982 act has drifted behind other pieces of legislation. Okay, Willie Coffey, you're desperate to get in there. I was just on this issue about the burger brands and really can and can't operate. I mean my understanding of East Asia Councils, my own authority is that they apply conditions to where things like burger vans can operate and for example they don't permit them within a certain distance of schools, for example so is the solution to that not within the conditions that the local authority can apply to prevent things like that example happening from setting up outside someone's front door or window, so they do have the powers within conditions that they set to be a bit more prescriptive about where exactly they can operate. Mr Smith? I suppose the answer is maybe yes and no. Conditions have applied to a licence once it's granted, so they control the operation. The local authority could set policies around not wanting a licence to be granted near schools or not wanting to be granted near particular establishments. How legally sound those policies are is open to debate. I think as well you have to remember that the street training is a very good example of where. How many times have you faced challenges in Glasgow in terms of some of those policies? Over 30 years, not an exact number but hundreds of times, certainly in respect of some policies, some conditions. Street training serves a good example of where. Street training is poor paragraphs in the 1982 act. There are not two authorities in Scotland that approach street training in the same way. Some licence them on a mobile basis, some licence them in localities, some licence on specific locations, some licence individuals, some licence businesses. It's an incredible mix and for traders who are operating across Scotland they face multiple different licensing regimes just to operate. Conditions can tackle some of the issues, policy can tackle some of the issues but it's entirely conceivable that someone can come in and apply for a licence which won't fall within policies. The consultation might just be with the police and no one else and then the licence will go through, the licence will be granted and then suddenly that business will start to operate and at that point the community will then say why is this business been licensed? For street training you can assert any of the activities that we deal with under the 1982 act and we really have no mechanism to then take that licence away if it's causing a problem unless it's a matter of criminality or it's a breach of a specific condition and that is not analogous with the powers that we have under the 2005 act which give communities and the police and local licensed standards officers powers under the review procedures to bring an issue to the licensing board at any time whether it's a breach of conditions or a breach of the licensing objectives. Why would you want to remove a licence unless there was a breach of conditions anyway? Well, it's the issue of public nuisance. If a community doesn't want a license that's granted to be enforced, if that's causing definable public nuisance then I think it's right that communities should be given the power to bring that matter to licensing authorities and allow licensing authorities to make those decisions and the simple fact of the matter is that communities at the moment don't have that power but they would have that power under the 2005 act in respect of liquor licensed premises. I like playing devil's advocate at this committee. A number of years ago my father had an ice cream van which obviously was dealt with under the licensing act. It served a number of communities which were defined in the licence. There were one or two individuals who didn't want an ice cream van in their particular area so they would report time and time and time again about breach of conditions of use of chimes in a van that didn't actually have any chimes. I would like to get an idea from you how many times there are complaints about licences from individuals which maybe don't reflect the views of entire communities on that particular licence. The lack of a review process within the 1982 act means that we don't deal with that many complaints in relation to licences premises because at the initial inquiry they realised there's nothing that we can do but we will deal with objections on a regular basis through the application process. Probably maybe 10% of licences applications will garner some form of objection to them. The point is that the process allows those individuals to bring the matter to the licencing authority and the licencing authority to deal with that issue. If it's an individual that's not representing a community, the licencing authority can establish that through the application process and determine not to attach a relevant amount of weight to that. If we had the review process that we have under the 1982 act, there would be the ability within that to treat repeated complainers as frivolous and vexatious and not have to continually deal with them. Again, that's an example of where the 1982 act doesn't have the robust provisions of the 2005 act to deal with repeat complainers in an effective way so that it's of course important to balance both sides. Communities need to have a route to raise issues about licence holders and licence activities but effective legislation will also have measures in that to ensure that where they are repeated or vexatious or being raised by one individual that's not representing a community, that can be established and appropriate mechanisms can be put in place to ensure that that can be addressed. We have that broadly within the 2005 act. We have no equivalent provisions within the 1982 act. Mitchel, please. I think in certainly our local experiences we would receive quite a large volume of complaints about businesses who are licensed and how they interact with individuals and it can be quite difficult for the licencing authority, I suppose, to come to a view of what sense somebody's individual grievance with a particular licence, who they happen to be, for example, living next door or living above a particular premise, at what point that becomes representative of a wider community concern about an individual licence premise having a wider impact to the community. The grounds for refusing under the act, which in essence are really the grounds at which you could consider taking action, for example, suspension are fairly limited and it's a fairly high standard. Certainly, I welcome the introduction of the role of mediation under the civil licensing standards officer as a way of trying to resolve some of them. I don't think that it will resolve all of them, but it at least gives us a formal route similar to what the LSOs use under the 2005 act to try and mediate between individuals and licenced premises. What licenced premises are most of those complaints about? Would it be hot food takeaways, for example? That can be quite topical, but again, if I just give you an example, re-use the street trading provisions to licenced pericabs, which individual pericabs are not a particular issue, but it's now we have a problem in the city that the volume of them, how they operate at night, where they operate at night, is causing significant community concern and we're struggling to use the powers available in the 1982 act to control the impact collectively of those licences, because each individual licence holder might be creating a technical breach of the act, but it's the cumulative impact. If you go down certain streets in Edinburgh at night, you'll see a congregation of those pericabs blocking the pavements, etc. It's that kind of issue that the 1982 act is not particularly adept at dealing with. In terms of complaints—this is really being devil's advocate here—how many times do you find that somebody moves into a community new and then starts moaning about the licence that's in place, buys a house up above a Chinese takeaway, for example, and suddenly starts moaning about noxious smells. I give that example, because many years ago I had a woman who moved into a house in my old council ward and the house was next to a playground, and then she started a campaign to remove the playground. Mr Smith? I would say that, more often than not, it's the other way around, it's community councils, it's established residents who will be complaining about new licence activity that springs up in their area. Yes, if you bring any licence authority to the table, we will have examples like that if someone will move into an area and then they will complain about that area, and there may be a part that thinks that businesses were clearly there beforehand, so it perhaps shouldn't come as a surprise. Overall, my experience is that complaints will come from residents, from community councils, from people who have lived in an area for a long time, and it will be in relation to new activities that are springing up. Because of the lack of community engagement, because the act doesn't really empower communities to shape around licensing, by the time that those issues spring up, we're not really empowered to do anything about that. Mr Mitchell? I think that we would recognise a similar pattern, but we do have issues. For example, it's quite topical for us at present the impact of live music and for both premises licensed under the 2002 act and the 2005 act. If you're a neighbour, what impact noise has if you're in our residential premises? The promoters of music have raised concerns with the council along that lines of, you know, the venues long established has been there for many years, and often they find that the people complaining have moved into the area after the venue has been long established, so that we do recognise, in some circumstances of that, the pattern in which the convener has been outlined as their nurse. Can I just take up Mr Mitchell's thing about pedicabs without going into too much detail? I mean, who are you licensing? Are you licensing the cab or the driver, and are there many problems with it? They seem to be prevalent in Edinburgh, rather than in other cities that you know of. We haven't come across pedicabs, particularly before. For pedicabs, we are using the trading provisions, and Glasgow takes a quite different approach to what we take. However, we are licensing both the operator and the individual pedicab drivers for want of a better description. The issue for us is the volume of them. We now have several hundred operating in the city. The standards of behaviour—some of the operators have recently been called to the licensing sub-committee to discuss the standards of behaviour of the drivers or blocking pavements—is a zone where they are supposed to operate in the city, roughly speaking the world heritage site map. Often, you will find them outside that zone, which is a clear breach of their condition, but they are going where the market takes them. Thank you. Are you limiting the amount of pedicabs? They seem to be providing a service. I have not used them myself, but I think that we take the view that there is no power to limit them, so the issue is how we then manage what we currently have. Under planning legislation, the statutory consultee in terms of community councils would be notified if there was a planning application submitted in being considered by the council. A neighbour within a certain distance would be notified that that licence or the change to planning was taking place. Would you see any value in that type of neighbour notification or statutory consultee condition applying to the issue of licences, for instance, for burger vans in particular areas? I think that it is worth exploring. I think that there is a bit more about how you administer it and how logistics it is, but leaving that aside, if you take the burger van as an example, as an authority, we would advise the police of an application as a courtesy. We would tell elected members and community councils, even though we are not under a statutory obligation to do so. Beyond that, if you remember the public who happens to be living beside this burger van, unless you check your online registers or happen to see the site notice, there would be no way of you knowing that that application was being considered up until the point that it was granted and the burger van became a reality in your street. I would absolutely agree with my colleagues' comments on that. We would welcome some statutory requirements to ensure that community councils and local elected members are engaged. The neighbour notification process is very technical and complicated, but, again, if there is such provision to do that, we can make that work. It would certainly help to add towards the engagement piece, and that would help in the application process, but it does not address the other side, which is once the licence is granted, there is not much in the way of powers to deal with it after that. Please, convener, but in the neighbour notification issue, where there may be a radius, for example, where neighbours within that radius must be notified, there is nothing preventing the authority from notifying people outwith that radius. That is a common fault in complaints that I receive, even as an MSP, that people five steps over the line have no notification. Surely the local authorities are empowered to decide to extend the notification to people whom they may decide may be impacted by a new shop or some kind of facility, so you do not need an amendment to the act to enable that. You can just, by discretion, decide that neighbours will be impacted. Is that your understanding? I would say that our solicers would shift uncomfortably with that suggestion. They can be reasonable sometimes, but in terms of that specific issue, we are always conscious that we have to work within the lines of the legislation, and where we might say that it would be quite reasonable to go outwith those lines, we are on the risk of then seeking objections and overstepping our boundary as a body that is dealing with an application in an open, transparent way. If we go seeking objections, does that then take that? A little bit further, seeking objections. If I hark back to my days as a councillor, and I am sure others who have served in councils around this table as well, there have been times when we have probably decided to tell large swathes of areas about applications that have come in, not saying to folk one word or what they should do or whether they should object or not object, but letting them know that that is happening. What is so wrong with that? I am looking at it from the perspective of the licensing authority, and the licensing authority has given legislation that instructs it on what it should do, and to go beyond what it should do has to be assessed as whether or not the authority is seeking those objections. Obviously, if we pass that to the local members for the ward, they can take that matter. Yes, we pass it to the members, to the community councils in some instances, and they can take those issues further. If we are giving legislation that says only consult within four metres, and we, for some applications, say, let's take that to five metres, then, as the uncomfortably shifting solicitors would say, that's overstepping the market, seeking objections. Mr Mitchell? I suppose that notwithstanding any legal issues, if you go back to the 22 act, there is no mechanism needed to act for neighbour notification, so local authorities, if they were to do it, would be doing so entirely voluntary, and the biggest barrier will be cost. You would have to find the staff to work out which premises to notify, prepare the letter, send them out at cost. Pick it again. In terms of cost, if you notified further, do you think that it may save on complaints in the long run, in officer time, and it may save you a great deal of money to extend rather than not to? In terms of the 22 act, it's not a question of notifying further, it's a question that there is no neighbour notification on the 22 act at present, but in answer to your direct point, convener, in my experience, the more you make people aware of those premises, the more likely you are to get complaints and objections. That's my experience. At the beginning? At any point in the process, if you advertise that an application is pending or a renewal is pending, I suspect that you would get. Give the convener an example. We have HMOs, which is not part of the 22 act, but we have people who have been complaining about individual HMOs for 10 years in a row. They complain year after year after year, despite the fact that the committee has heard their complaints and ruled on them. I certainly would advocate some form of neighbour notification because it would deal with some of the issues of the public being disengaged with the licensing system, but it would generate a volume of work. Back to Mr Coffey's point, that's probably the biggest barrier at present to local authorities choosing to do that. The bill that is presented in the financial memorandum says that the local authorities would be able to recover, through licensing fees, any costs associated with the applications. Surely in the situation that you outlined, any additional costs in consultation could be recovered through the application process. Absolutely. That's where the costs would go back. Those in turn would translate as a cost on business because it's the applicants who are paying the fees, who would then pay additional fees in order to pay for the neighbour notification. Mr Smith, anything to add to that? I would just add that from Glasgow's perspective, if the committee were to place neighbour notification requirements on the authority, we would implement those, we would engage with communities. I think that that would help to make them aware of that. The costs would be passed to business, but the act is structured in such a way that that is the model for it to work. If it's the will of the committee that we should do that, we're absolutely able to do that. COSLA has suggested that licensing standards officers be given additional enforcement powers under the Gambling Act 2005. Do you think that that would be helpful, Mr Smith? I wouldn't find that incredibly helpful at all. The Gambling Act in Scotland is a UK-wide piece of legislation. There are certain regulations that are enacted to give local authorities in Scotland specific powers. The regulations that are enacted to give local authorities the power to inspect licensing, like gambling premises, weren't enacted correctly and local authorities don't have any powers to inspect premises that offer gambling. Extending the remit of those officers to deal with gambling would be somewhat pointless, as we have no powers to inspect gambling premises in Scotland. The act was written wrong? Yes, as I'm misdrafting one of the pieces of regulation. Thank you, Mr Mitchell. Would you agree with that? I'm not sure how we got there, because I'm not a particular expert in gambling, but I would say that we are finding that we are having to do the work, go out and check the premises, absent having explicit statutory powers, so anything that can be done to address that would be useful. There are some issues within the powers, as it currently exists. For example, in relation to unlicensed premises, only the police have powers in relation to unlicensed premises, so if you are creating this new role, I would suggest that that need to be looked at, because the police may or may not pick up on unlicensed premises, but creating a role of an officer in the council to deal with licensing issues and not giving them any powers to deal with unlicensed premises seems to be an obvious gap. If I can move on to ask you about how information is shared between the council's various licensing functions, are there formal links in terms of your own councils between the licensing board and the licensing committee? Mr Smith? They are both administered by the same team, so there is an underlying... Does it sometimes? It may be administered by the same team, but often, within teams, information is not shared. Do you think that, in Glasgow, there is that sharing of information? Absolutely. At the administrative level, I am not sure if there are maybe specific examples that you should give me. I could probably give you numerous, but I won't, Mr Smith. I am just interested to hear what you have to say on that issue. In terms of the administrative side of committees and boards, they will tend to be dealt with by teams that will be integrated to some extent. In Glasgow, it is a complete integration. It is one team, and that information is available to both those teams. When you go out with that, I think that, in different local authorities, you do find very different setups in terms of enforcement teams, licensing standards teams. I am calling for it, and I will explain that it is quite an integrated model that they have there. In Glasgow, our tax enforcement and licensing standards teams sit within an entirely separate service of the council. If we have civic officers, they will sit in an entirely different part of the council. We have well-established links to share information, and we are continuing to make sure that that is improved as we go forward, so that there is a level of joined-up thinking. However, in essence, the administrative side of licensing will hold the information, and it is our responsibility to make sure that there are effective links to the enforcement teams to share that information and that there are also suitable links to external bodies such as Police Scotland to give them that information. One of the things that we have heard from folks is that members of the public will call and will be put from pillar to post, one person to another person to another person to try and get a problem resolved. Do you think that that happens in Glasgow by the current situation that you have there? I think that that will happen in every local authority, just given the structure of the licensing setup and the fact that it deals with so many disparate parts. Licensing standards officers that deal with alcohol are a good example, especially when you bring breakthrough into the mix. If someone has a problem about noise coming from a licensed premises, they may either contact the licensing board or contact licensing standards officers. In either case, they would eventually be directed to licensing standards officers. However, licensing standards officers within Glasgow then take the view that it is a noise issue and there is specific legislation to deal with noise, so that matter then has to be transferred to the noise team to deal with that. They would then deal with the noise issue and then they may bring that back to licensing standards if they believe that it is a licensing issue contained within the noise issue, and then that may come back to the board. There certainly will be people directed pillar to post. It is a complicated system and I think that standards officers in both liquor and civic are a good idea to give the public a single point of contact to engage with the process, but the reality is that, moving from that, they will then possibly be directed elsewhere. If you contact a civic enforcement officer about an issue with a later catering premises and it is a food complaint, then that issue will have to be transferred to the environment of health to be investigated. Councils are, as you will understand, large structures, and I think that it is important that they give people single points of contact to come into those processes, but the reality is that sometimes they will then have to be directed elsewhere once they engage with the council. Do you not think that that single point of contact should maybe be the liaison for the entire process and deal with the matter in a single manner? I will give you an example that we have had as a committee, and that is about complaints and sexual entertainment venues, in some cases there have been licensing board, licensing committee matters and beyond that there have been advertising matters that fall under the remit of the King's Hall as the planning authority. Wouldn't it be much easier in those circumstances if there was a single point of contact and that single point of contact is the liaison to deal with that complaint and maybe even further it would be wise to bring sexual entertainment venues for example under one regime, maybe under the licensing board rather than all of the rest of it. Do you have a view? I think that that is entirely sensible. To achieve that there is a requirement to ensure that that is within legislation and within the statutory guidance that goes on to support that legislation. Without that clear guidance local authorities will not consistently take that view. As I said, the enforcement teams within the council don't sit within the licensing remit, so even if I did perhaps share your view it's the decision of entirely separate part of the council to deal with complaints in the manner that they're dealt with, but I can certainly understand the frustration of a community who are engaging with a licence officer perhaps on a noise complaint and then to be told that that has to be dealt with by the noise team, but without clear guidance on the right crew and without clear guidance on what a licence officer should be doing with for example a noise complaint, which is going to be something that our imagine is dealt with fairly regularly across Scotland, there will be a defensive approach between councils and that can certainly be addressed through guidance. I think that across Scotland different authorities will take different views. Part of the reason why Edinburgh put all the licensing functions under one service grouping and one manager was to try and address some of the issues that you outlined. I would say honestly that we are making progress, but in terms of making a streamlined system I wouldn't say that we're all the way there yet. Adult entertainment and sexual entertainment provisions are an interesting example. I would take the view that adult entertainment provisions are fairly much redundant post-bright crew and what's happening is that certainly our experience in Edinburgh is that licensing standards officers are trying to manage a regime with very little powers to do so. We are one of those authorities who have had complaints about adverts and the impact of those types of premises on the community and I can honestly say part of the reason why communities are probably frustrated is because there are very little powers, planning, trading standards, licensing or otherwise, to deal with those types of issues absent what has been proposed in the bill. That is extremely useful. One of the things is that the public often feel that they will contact somebody and get very little response. What is commonly known in the north east is the slopey shoulder scenario. It's not my job. I'll pass it on to somebody else. If we could maybe move on and ask you... Claire, sorry, I didn't notice you. On you go. It was just on that point and whether you feel that the proposals in the bill will give any significant change to the way sexual entertainment is dealt with and whether you think the bringing together of the alcohol licence and sexual entertainment licence under one body to grant would actually help with some of the problems that you've experienced. I suppose that I take a different perspective from a colleague here. Licensing boards are not suited to deal with those types of issues. The Edinburgh's view is that local authorities are best placed and welcome the provisions for sexual entertainment and the use of schedule 2 needs some updating, but it is certainly more effective than most other things that we have at present. For example, schedule 2, if that's where sexual entertainment goes into, allows you to control the form and content of adverts by means of condition, whether or not you can see into premises, those kinds of issues. I don't think myself that the adult entertainment provisions have been at all successful and part of that is because I would suggest that boards are largely there to regulate the sale of alcohol. They're not suited to deal with these wider community issues, but that's at my personal view. Be adapted and why can't they do all? I suppose that they could. I think that it's a choice that the Parliament will have to make. Our view is that local authorities have that broader base of responsibilities are more accountable to the community in that sense for sexual entertainment and that's largely why we suggest that it should be part of a council function and leave the board to go on with licensing alcohol. It seems in terms of the evidence that we've taken that communities don't feel that councils have done what they need to do to deal with the issues that they have raised with councils. Well, certainly at present there is no powers for councils that the creation of this new licensing scheme would for the first time give councils, as opposed to boards, the power to deal with these types of premises. Mr Smith, do you have a view on those issues? I do, yes. I think that we need one licensing authority. I don't think that there's really a need to have two distinct licensing authorities, a licensing committee and a licensing board. In Glasgow, we've racked our brains for many years to understand why you have a licensing board, why it's not just one licensing function. I think that the specific issue on alcohol and sexual entertainment venues, the reason we're having to implement sexual entertainment licensing is because of a decision within the alcohol bill, this breakthrough decision, which really says that the bill is just about regulating the sale of alcohol and not the other activities. You don't have to implement sexual entertainment licensing if you fix breakthrough. If you create a licensing scheme that is dealing with not just the sale of alcohol but a range of activities flowing from the premises, then you can easily regulate alcohol and sexual entertainment under one licensing scheme and under one licensing body, but it's coming back to the fact that the overall system is just not right and you would really have to go back to the beginning and start again to create something that is singular and coherent. There's no real need to have two licensing bodies. Just on that point about the two licensing bodies, I go back to the previous evidence session that I indicated that I served on a licensing board and the licensing committee of an authority, because there were basically two separate bodies and the same members on those two bodies, but one would make decisions on licensing applications and one would make, for instance, private hire cars or taxi licences. What would be the problem in bringing those two together? Are there any problems in bringing those two together? My understanding is that the licensing board was seen as a cosy legal body, whereas the committee was just seen as one of the additional committees of the council, where the councillors could sit on those committees. What would be the practical difficulties in bringing all the licensing under one body, whether that be a licensing board or the licensing committee of an authority? Aberdeen Bowes were deemed to be quasi-judicial. Mr Smith? We both are quasi-judicial. I mean, Mr Boweson's exact perspective, but I would imagine that you did not treat an application for a private hire licence any different to the way that you treat an application for alcohol. They were both considered against the same, not the same, but in the same way under legal frameworks. I do not want to give an off-the-cuff answer just to say that it would not be quite easy just to amalgam the two together. I think that there were probably a lot of legal issues in the minutiae of things about how that would work, but I think that as an overall concept, from a local authority perspective, it is quite unclear why we have two distinct licensing boards, a committee and a board, dealing with two different aspects of licensing. If they emerge together into a single, cohesive structure with the right regulatory framework around that, I think that it would be a far better model than what we have at the moment. I really feel that the licensing board is just a very historical thing that has been kept going for years and years and years. Mr Mitchell? I think that I have a quite similar perspective. I am sure that there are clerks of the licensing board up and down the country. I am probably quite agitated at this point, but the boards are a separate legal entity. They have been for a number of years. For the practical purposes, it is the same council staff. Often, it is the same councillors who are dealing with both licensing boards—in our case, the regulatory committee and the licensing sub-committee. We have a number of councils who sit on both. At my experience, it is not well understood by the public that they think that the licensing board is just another council committee, whereas in law it is not. The only practical difference of that is that the council can formulate overall policy on which committees should have regard to the licensing board. That does not impact the licensing board because it is entirely separate. Okay. Thank you very much. One final question. That is about second-hand dealers and metal dealers. Obviously, the bill would remove some of the connections between the licensing requirement placed on second-hand dealers and metal dealers. Do you have any concerns about that, Mr Smith? No, I think that those specific aspects are well drafted. I would go back to my underlying comments that they are trying to fix a system that is perhaps, for lack of a better word, broken. However, those actual proposals in themselves, I do not really have any concerns about the interrelationship that those changes will make. Mr Mitchell? I certainly think that the strengthening of the metal dealers provision is long overdue. Some of the current aspects, for example, if you are a metal dealer above a certain financial threshold, you are then exempt from the requirement to obtain a licence. I have never quite understood how that particular section of the act was set up in that particular way, so anything to strengthen that would be welcome. Very briefly, Willie Coffey. I just wanted to ask the two members about their views on taxi driver licence applications. We had an example, which was covered in the media, where a person with a string of complaints and allegations was made against them, moved to the other authority and made an application for a taxi driver's licence there. Without that knowledge being brought to the table, how can we solve a problem like that in your view? I assume that I have said that finally before my last question. Mr Smith? One of the pieces of work that the Glasgow has done over the last couple of years is to look at the integration of enforcement teams across different local authorities to ensure that we are able to work in partnership with those authorities and that we can tackle if a driver from Wemfordshire comes into Glasgow or Glasgow is going into Wemfordshire, there is an ability to deal with that. Moving on from that piece of work, we need to look at better information sharing between those processes. Obviously, the civic act is struggling in such a way that the application will go to the police and if it is a conviction or even intelligence to some extent, but let's not go there. Those issues can be brought to the committee. I think that there probably is a gap between concerns that one local authority enforcement team may have and how that gets passed to other local authorities. As we move forward with our integration piece and as we look at new technology solutions, we will look to address that. However, I do not think that there really is a mechanism in place that is going to address that problem right now. To address it is about looking at cross-border enforcement of that sector and probably looking at technical solutions along with that to ensure that that information can be shared. Obviously, there may be challenges there. If it is not convictions, if it is just matters that should be investigated by another local authority, there would be questions about how much weight could be attached to that. However, I think that it would only be very improper that as we move forward and as technology advances that we make sure that information is something that local authorities have available to them when they are making those decisions in future. Mr Mitchell, please. I think that the move to a single force has helped in some regard, but there are still variances across the country that a police team may object in one part of the country and not object in another part of the country. We have a particularly high turnover of private, higher-car drivers. We recognise a phenomenon of people who are coming from England and Wales, who have been refused licences by authorities down south, who are then seeking almost a shopping round, trying to obtain a private higher-car driver's licence and the hope that somebody will give them a licence and they would then move to where that licence to work is. I think that the local authorities' powers in relation to private higher-car drivers does not help. For example, if you are a taxi driver, because we can certainly choose to put taxi drivers through an element of training, it somewhat discourages people who are not serious about moving to an area from doing that, but because the powers currently in relation to private higher-car drivers are relatively weak, we are recognising that as a particular problem. I thank you very much for your evidence today, gentlemen. That has been very useful. I suspend this meeting and we move into private session.