Highland Licensing Board - Extension to public consultation on overprovision policy statement

15th September 2013

The Highland Licensing Board has included a third option to the current on-line consultation currently underway on the options for proposals for the Licensing Board's Overprovision Policy Statement 2013-16.

Launched at the start of this month, the consultation invites members of the public to have their say on whether there is an overprovision of licensed premises in any locality within the area of Highland Licensing Board.

Where the Board has stated in its Policy Statement that there is overprovision of any particular description of licensed premises in any locality, this will create a presumption against the grant of applications for licences for such premises in that locality. The onus would then lie with the applicant to satisfy the Board that there are material reasons why his or her application should nonetheless be granted and that the grant would not conflict with any of the licensing objectives.

The new third option has been created following a submission from NHS Highland identifying levels of alcohol-related health harm in Highland on the basis of Intermediate Data Zones (IDZ), as opposed to multi-member wards. There are 54 IDZs in Highland and the further report identifies that 25 of these have levels of alcohol-related hospital admissions statistically significantly above the Scottish average.

The wording for Option 3 is:
That the Board’s overprovision statement should create a presumption against the grant of any more premises licences where the off-sales capacity sought (i.e. size of alcohol display area) is 40 m2 or over (or exceeds such other capacity as the Board considers appropriate) and that this presumption should apply only in the 25 Intermediate Data Zones (IDZ) identified by the NHS as the areas of greatest incidence of alcohol-related harm (based on rates of hospitalisation for alcohol-related conditions in Highland). These IDZs are:

· Invergordon
· Sutherland North and West
· Tain
· Nairn East
· Thurso West
· Caithness South
· Skye North West
· Skye South
· Lochalsh
· Lochaber East & North
· Dingwall
· Thurso East
· Inverness Drummond
· Inverness Kinmylies and South West
· Inverness Hilton
· Alness
· Wick North
· Fort William South
· Inverness Ballifeary and Dalneigh
· Fort William North
· Skye North East
· Wick South
· Inverness Muirtown
· Inverness Central, Raigmore and Longman
· Inverness Merkinch

The Consultation Questionnaire can be accessed from The Highland Council’s website – www.highland.gov.uk. The deadline for responses is Friday 18 October 2013. The new policy statement will run for three years from December of this year.