I was part of a licensing hearing today where the Police had asked the City Council to review and revoke the premises licence for R&H News on St. Clement’s as it had failed three test purchases of alcohol to under 18s, carried out by Thames Valley Police.  The Police only do test purchases where there is local intelligence that there is an underage sales problem in a premises.  The test purchasers are not allowed to lie or use fake ID in the premises either.

The hearing was delayed by an hour because the licence holder’s barrister was held up in a difficult case at the Magistrates’ court.  After hearing the evidence both from the Police and the licence holder it became apparent to the panel that the problems were caused by the designated premises supervisor (who has to be trained and have a personal licence to sell alcohol) allowing inexperienced casual staff to sell alcohol. These people appeared not to be following proper procedures or checks before making sales.

The panel (me, Mary Clarkson and Rae Humberstone) decided that the public interest would be best served by making sure that only properly trained and qualified people were allowed to sell alcohol in this premises, which is in a sensitive area with an established problem of under-age and street drinking.   We did this by imposing a condition that only personal licence holders would be allowed to sell alcohol at R&H news and various other things such as maintaining a refusals book, having a policy of challenging anyone who looks under 25, and specifying documents that can be used as age proof.

We had to balance the desire not to put local people out of business with the need to protect minors from harm by ensuring that they cannot buy alcohol.  I believe our decision achieved that.

The licence holder has 21 days to appeal the decision and if he does not do so before then our decision becomes a binding part of his premises licence.  If he does appeal then he can carry on operating as he is now, until the outcome of the appeal (which would be to Oxford Magistrates) is known.   If the shop fails another test purchase or breaks any of the new licence conditions after they come into force then Thames Valley Police would be entirely within its rights to refer the premises back to the City Council for a further review of its premises licence.