Clause 68 - The relevant licensing authority
Licensing Bill [Lords]
4:00 pm
Dr Kim Howells (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Culture, Media & Sport; Pontypridd, Labour)
I can confirm that the provision is new. The clause provides the means of determining which is the relevant licensing authority for the purpose of part 4. It provides that the relevant licensing authority for these purposes is the authority in which the premises, or the greater part of the premises, is situated. It approaches the determination of the relevant licensing authority in the same way that the Bill approaches premises licences. I hope that that helps the hon. Gentleman.
Where club premises straddle two or more authority areas equally, there could be a problem. I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman how many of those there are, but they must be rare. I have been informed by geographers that boundaries mainly go down the middle of highways and that buildings are usually on either side of them and not in the middle. However, I have also been told that in some market towns there might be a club or pub in a building that was formally a market building and the new configured boundary could go straight through the middle of it. Can the hon. Member for Isle of Wight give us an example?