Transcript

[BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to today's meeting of the Edinburgh Licensing Board, which will be recorded live and saved for future playback. It is, as I say, it's been filmed for lights that that's where I'm looking for. It's subsequent broadcast via the Council's website. Now, the Council is a data controller under the General Data Protection Regulation and Data Protection Act 2018. We broadcast meetings to fulfill our public task obligation to enable members of the public to observe the democratic process. Data collected during this webcast will be detained in accordance with the Council's published policy. We will continue to record the session all day to assist with not taking minutes and any requests for statements of reasons, but it will be only the business section at the start that will be broadcast and stored for public availability. Those that are in the public seating gallery will not be filmed, but may be heard. Please be aware of that in your attendance. And as a reminder to board members, if you can, please remember to turn on your microphone when speaking and turn off when you're done as these activate the cameras. Thank you very much. I'll hand over to you. Thank you, Convener. The first item in the Board's agenda this morning is a Convener's update. Thank you very much. We're going to do this from memory now, while this theme just continues to see just a moment. It's the longest moment. So a couple of things that had on my radar. I was very mindful that last month when we made it, it was just after we had done our first of the Fast Track Friday sessions. For those maybe watching or in the public gallery that aren't familiar with this, very, very brief. Somebody, these are additional online meetings that we've arranged where an application looks to be fairly straightforward. There are no objections and there is only a very minor adjustment, if any, to the provision of alcohol. This was to try and help us address the backlog that we had, which was currently sitting in excess of like six months. So I think at one point. And for those applications, when it is quite straightforward, I think we used the example of adding on karaoke, for example. It seems a disproportionate weight for applicants and license holders for something that has to come to the Board, but actually is a fairly minor adjustment from our perspective. So we hadn't really had an opportunity to gather any feedback last month when we met. We obviously now have had the second session on Friday just there. But in between, I did reach out to all of the agents that attended on the first Friday to ask for their feedback in terms of the format, in terms of the five minute limit that we've put on comments, which obviously doesn't apply in a food board meeting, the kind of admin and support around all of that. Just to kind of get their feedback, see if they felt it was working. And I have to say, overall, really, really pleased at the feedback that we got. The five minutes, nobody had any concerns about that. Hopefully that was more than sufficient to cover what they wanted to cover. The speed at which they meant that their applications were being hired was absolutely appreciated indeed, of course, by their clients. What I hadn't thought about, which was an additional comment made by a number of them, is that actually it can be quite cost effective for their clients because they're not having to pay for an agent to sit, perhaps quite hours of a board meeting waiting to be hired, that actually the agent is able just to sit, listen to online and join as required. So actually it makes it more affordable, which I think, especially for small businesses, could make actually quite a big difference. So that was interesting. Obviously on the flip side of that is if we do end up referring the application to a full board heating, then potentially the client has to pay for their time twice. So it is with that in mind that when we do ever refer an applicant on from a Friday to Monday, I will ask that that one is the first one of our applications, so as not to require an agent to be sitting for perhaps a long period of time, just to be mindful of that. I have to say, and I have passed on this feedback to them, firstly, I think Caitlin, who has stepped in to clerk these meetings, has been doing an excellent job and I'm very, very grateful for that. Anna was particularly called out by a few of the agents who provided feedback just on the support that she provided in preparation, but also in terms of managing the meeting with the waiting room and so on and so forth. And I just wanted to again publicly pass on my thanks for helping us with a new process. It was much appreciated. One change that we did to make by the time of the second meeting was in terms of allowing people into the session. As we know agents often like to sit in the public gallery to listen to how we're dealing with applications, it helps them build up the knowledge of how we're working. We were operating a very strict waiting room after the first meeting, only permitting in people that were relevant to the application at hand and we had some feedback that actually it would be quite nice agents. In the way that we'd have a public gallery, we'd like to be able to kind of dial in and listen even if they're on kind of mute and off camera. So we implemented that for the second session. I think that went reasonably well. We're still kind of finding our feet a little bit, making sure the right people are getting in, but I think that was appreciated. I do accept, of course, that adding in any extra meetings requires more time by members and more time by officers in preparation. I do want to state my thanks to members of the board who've made themselves available for one of both of these meetings. I appreciate that these are very busy and it's much appreciated. I hope the format and the strict kind of time limit on it is helping to alleviate some of the additional pressure and again to thank all the kind of staff who are sitting behind the scenes, helping to pool twice as many papers now together. It is very much appreciated. Just to give you a bit of an update, I think when I was looking back that we have dealt with about 30 applications by using the two Fridays and only three of them maybe four were referred on to a full board meeting. So it shows that we're doing the process properly and we're paying attention to whether or not it is suitable to be heard on a Friday, but equally it is now 30 applications that aren't sitting in a backlog waiting list. So I think it's made a huge difference. It's my understanding that actually we probably don't need another full session in me because we've managed to catch up, but I know that we're looking now utilizing perhaps some sessions to get to start discussing over provision and where we go from there. I'll touch on what will come to that one at the very end. And over provision indeed is next week's backlog, sorry. I wondered if you had any stats. Did you manage to get stats on where we are now? So there's 26 applications on the go at the moment, 13 are ready for us and 13 are out at the moment. So it's a huge difference I think when I first sat down with Jenny to look at this issue of the backlog, I think at the time we had like 57 applications waiting to be dealt with, so it has made a huge impact. So thank you very much everybody. And the only other point that I was going to kind of ease into was over provision and I also know that Jenny's going to give us an update on that. So perhaps I might just pause to see if there are any questions on anything before I move on to over provision. Yes? Just to check if Jenny will be updating the licensing for and where that week passed Friday. So I've got some notes from that. I can cover it, or Jenny can. Do you want to do that? Yeah, I think the main points we've got noted during here were there was obviously consideration of over provision in terms of the impacts of new hotels and premises to obtain a premises license and there was some feedback being gathered in that. There was also an action to circulate information to community councils and how to object to licensing applications because there was a concern that maybe some community councils are more informed than that than others. And there was talk of a potential linkage to the Edinburgh Association of Community Councils. There was also a request for some information which I think is being obtained to provide statistics and how many complaints have been received since the audible nuisance noise condition was implemented and also information on the number of licensed premises in Edinburgh now compared to ten years ago. So that was the main sort of topics covered. So happy to take questions on forum or anything else as well before we move into our provision. Councillor KI. Completely unrelated, I should have emailed you, but I can only do the morning session today until lunchtime. I'd love to go. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, that sounds like an interesting update from the forum. I wonder whether when the forum is supplied with the information they've requested, whether that could be circulated to the board as well. Any other questions, comments? OK, so over provisioned, just wondering if you want me to just give us kind of where we're at with everything. That would be great. Thank you. Thank you, Convener. I have got a slot at the end of the agenda in case members of us to discuss this in any more detail. But the position is that the consultation process is ongoing. So we don't have the outcome of that yet. The public consultation closes on the 13th of May when I checked at the beginning of last week. I think at that stage there were 37 responses, and there's clearly more time for responses to come in and will be re-promoting the consultation through the social media channels, et cetera. And as the Convener indicated, there may be a slot available in May for discussion after the consultation is closed for the board to consider next steps in whether you wish to, for example, consider evidence sessions in relation to the outcome of the consultation. And that's probably all I've got to say. Convener, unless, as I say, if you wish to discuss in more detail, we have put a slot in at the end of today's agenda. Any questions on this? Members kind of happy enough? Yep. OK. In which case we can move on to the minutes. Yep, thank you, Convener. So we have, first of all, the minutes of the meeting on 22nd of March, 2024. Are those agreed? And secondly, we have the minutes of the meeting with 25th March, 2024, I believe, Councillor Booth has a comment in relation to that. Thanks. Thanks, Convener. Yep. Just in terms of the record of the discussion on the black ball, it's recorded that that decision was on a division, but the names of board members voting each way was not recorded. In the past, we've said that, in the interest of transparency, we will record which way people vote, so I just wonder whether it might be possible to update the minutes in that respect. I've got no issue with that at all. Is that all right to update them? Yeah, I can confirm that information can be added prior to publication. Thank you. Any other questions or comments on minutes? No. Okay, thank you. In which case we'll be moving on to application, so if we can turn off the broadcast, please, thank you very much.