News roundup

There are a couple of interesting items on the Publican and Morning Advertiser websites at the moment.

The Publican covers a report from the Department of Health that "nearly all businesses are complying with the (smoking) ban". 97% of premises inspected in the first couple of weeks of the ban were properly smoke-free. Although there was criticism of the gov.t's advertising of the ban prior to 1 July the message, at least as far as the start date was concerned, seems to have got across.

I've not taken a look at the report myself but would suspect (from my general wanderings) that the percentage of premises showing the correct signage is less impressive. That seemed to be a common problem when Eleanor Goodman from The Publican spent a day with a smokefree officer (is that really their title?) inspecting premises in Herne Bay and Canterbury.

Meanwhile, over at the Morning Advertiser there's news of what sounds like rather over-zealous policing by the Merseyside Police. There's a few interesting aspects to the story involving the closure of the New Market in Newton-le-Willows in particular:

1. Carrying out sting operations on Friday evenings when the relevant Council department is closed until the following Monday;
2. Use of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 to order closure of the premises - "a complete abuse of the legal powers under the 2001 Act" as Peter Coulson points out; and
3. Whether the premises had in fact failed to "adopt and adhere to" the Challenge 21 age-check policy.

To expand on that last point, serving alcohol to an under-18 is an offence under the Licensing Act, fair enough. However, Challenge 21 policies are less absolute and in fact have a very subjective basis so it must be very hard to prove that one is not being adhered to - particularly if you're going to use it as the basis to close premises. Essentially the policy is only as good as the barstaff's perception - if the staff in this case said they thought the customer looked over 21 then there's no problem as far as adherence to a licence condition imposing the policy is concerned. I'm sure training could help but really, what does the average 21 year old look like?

Of course there may be other factors here that we're not aware of. As is often the case there is an element of confusion - in this case the police have denied saying that the premises must close over the whole weekend.

As far as the Challenge 21 policy is concerned, if it has been implemented there should be signage, training records and a refusals book to back this up. The latter two are the sorts of records often considered to be a pain to keep up but they are absolutely invaluable when they're needed - neglecting them is rarely a mistake made twice.

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