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If you want to change any of the details on your Premises Licence or Club Premises Certificate other than to transfer the Licence or vary the Designated Premises Supervisor it will be necessary to do this following consultation with the Licensing Authority.
Examples of such changes could be hours of the Licence, the types of licensable activities, the conditions of the Licence or the plan attached to the Licence.
Typically, if for example you wanted to extend the hours for the sale of alcohol on the Licence an application would need to be made to the Local Authority together with the appropriate fee determined by reference to the rateable value of the premises with a copy of the application being served on what are known as the Responsible Authorities (Police, Fire, Planning, Environmental Health, Building Control, trading Standards and Child Protection Committee) who would all be allowed to comment.
It will also be necessary to advertise the application on the premises and in the local newspaper. The procedure takes 28 days but if there are objections a hearing will have to be held before a Licensing Committee of the Local Authority.
As from July 2009 a new simplified procedure was introduced to deal with uncontroversial variations. Typically this could include a change to the layout of your premises. Plans of premises have to be drawn in a very prescriptive way to comply with regulations laid down by Parliament. Previously had you wanted to change any of the details on that plan, which with some Licensing Authorities could even involve the repositioning of a Fire Extinguisher, you would have had to apply for a major variation of the Premises Licence at enormous cost.
Minor Variation
The new minor variations procedure gives a power to the Licensing Officer at your Local Authority to deem that a variation is so unlikely to undermine one of the Licensing objectives (prevention of crime and disorder, public safety, protection of children from harm and prevention of public nuisance) that it can be dealt with in a minor way.
There is no requirement to serve the Responsible Authorities however there is a requirement to display, for ten days, a notice of application on the premises. If during that period there are objections, for example from a member of the public the Licensing Officer may well decline the application with no right of appeal, your only option then being to apply using the major variation route. The Council fee for applications of this nature is reduced to £89.00 and the whole process should be completed inside 15 working days.
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