Transcript

the business of the licensing committee and we will just kick off. Is everyone ready? Okay so the first thing is that Bradley has informed me that there are no fire drills or alarms and so if they do go off it is an event so please evacuate safely through the nominated exits and we'll start with apologies for absence and we have apologies from Councillor Croaker, Councillor Greenwood, Councillor Heliwell and Councillor Nowell. Thank you. And Councillor Potts. And Councillor Potts. Okay all noted. Okay the first order of business is to approve some minutes. We've got three sets of minutes to approve or to look at individually. Starting with the minutes dated the 24th of January

1. I think we certainly have some Councillors who were present at that meeting present today. Can we agree or disagree? Can we have notification from you that you've agreed to the minutes dated the 24th of January 23. Okay. Just I just need an agreed don't need a vote. Can I have a thank you Brett. Thank you. Okay you're proposed. I can have a seconder to approve the minutes of the 23rd. Thank you um Councillor Landau and we all agree. We all agree. Okay moving on to the same thing again minutes of the 8th of May 2024. Can I have a proposer and a seconder for approving these minutes. Thank you Councillor Livingstone. And can I have a seconder? Councillor Beard. Thank you very much. So those minutes have been approved. Thank you. And lastly minutes dated 24th of May 23. Recently can we approve those minutes and it can I have a proposer to approve those minutes. Thank you Councillor Fletcher. Can I have a seconder to approve those minutes? Councillor Olsen seconded those those minutes are all passed and approved. Okay so moving on to item three. Declarations of members interests pertaining to tonight's business. Is there any conflict of interest anyone would like to declare? No. Okay we'll move on. Item number four is announcements. I can confirm I don't have any announcements to make and I don't think the chief executive has either. Right thank you. So we're going to move on to main order of business item five agenda item five which concerns the tables and chairs licensing and I invite officer Mark Rankin to introduce the work. Thank you chair. I'll put the microphone on so you can all hear me. The local authority has licensed for a number of years to a delegated authority from West Sussex County Council tables and chairs within the town centre of Horsham. Back in 2020 the government set out in the business and planning act a requirement for us to or an ability for us to license tables and chairs across our district. We along with other local authorities took on that role and have done that ever since. Recently earlier this year that was formalized and stopped being a temporary concession and became a proper statute. We've then at place brought forward the or put forward the proposal and brought in the ability hopefully to bring in the ability for us to license tables and chairs on pavements across the district. The advantage we have got is that the vast majority are within Horsham itself and there are but one or two outside however that may change. Thank you very much. I just want to clarify the changes in the figures on behalf of the local businesses that will be impacted on this. Looking at the background information so that I understand, the historical fees for town centre, there was an application fee and then there was listed as a one year license fee. I have three questions to prep you. Was that correct? The current proposal seems to see that there's an application fee which includes a license and then there's a renewal license fee. Could you clarify that? Previously the application was for the application and then there was a one year license fee. My understanding is that it's still the same except we've been asked by central government to go for a two year license as opposed to a one year license. So I believe that it is, I don't believe at this age it's included in the application fee. Thank you, so understanding that then and the carryover from the COVID fees, it seems that we're keeping now the £500 application fee and then the license fee and or renewal fee is £350 but it's going to two years. So effectively there's a savings here for local businesses? Across the board yes because the vast majority of our licenses are the town centre ones. Some of them have taken on additional space so they wouldn't be required to make a new application because they're existing license holders. We would then roll into a bi-annual fee for them so there will be an increase for properties where they only had the temporary tables and chairs licenses but there is a balance. Our overall income will remain approximately the same and there will be in general a reduction because some of them like bills have a license and have taken on additional tables and chairs. It will become one license. Okay thank you very much and then the only other point was have, I haven't seen anything that says it was required to consult in any way with local businesses but I was just wondering particularly from the Horsham town perspective seeing that there is now a business improvement district was the bid informed about these pending changes or consulted in any way? We didn't personally consult the bid however a significant number of applicants that are within the bid area have come to us saying when are you going to bring this in please. So we are quite comfortable that those parties are aware of the situation. All right thank you. Thank you Councillor Alton. Councillor Landau. I just want to know this covers your tables and chairs no matter how many you have. It does. So if you've got two out there you've still got to pay the same as somebody who's got eight? Absolutely. What I would say is that it's based on frontage and in general smaller premises have a smaller frontage and larger ones have a larger frontage. The actual cost to the local authority of processing the application is identical because the requirements for information and for consultation with statutory consultees remains the same whether it's one table or 20. There is no difference at all and there's no provision within the legislation for us to do that per se. Thank you Mark. Anyone else have questions? Councillor Livingstone. Yeah in the policy document itself it lists a number of possible conditions. The first question is how are you going to monitor compliance with this or do you currently monitor compliance? With regards to the tables and chairs within the town centre that are parts of the existing framework we do have regular compliance visits albeit potentially annual and obviously when we're aware of issues and when officers are inspecting for other purposes they will observe and report back to licensing if there's a perceived transgression. With regards to the temporary tables and chairs there was no requirement, sorry requirement, there was an encouragement for us to adopt a light touch approach to allow people to come back from from the Covid lockdown and that's what's fallen away and they're now regulating. So yes we will need to conduct annual visits to these premises. Will you be putting in conditions such as no glass vessels for spaces used by public houses? The conditions that we have are clearly set out on our website. I may even have them open and I can tell you exactly what we... So we have a significant number of, including no A-boards photos, glasses themselves, no that we would not normally require to be planted. It would be normal tableware. So they could be glass outside in the street? Well no, any materials that were pertinent to the premises would be contained within a segregated area which is not designed to have people walking through the tables and chairs as a thoroughfare. Okay I understand now, thank you. Is anybody else? Oh Councillor Mercer. I haven't been speaking much because clearly I'm the cabinet member responsible and the committee therefore will be making recommendations to the cabinet on the basis of this report but I did want to just remind members that this was discussed in full at the PDAG on the 6th of June. As well as today. So thank you to Mark Rankin for answering some of my queries in advance. One of the questions that I had was about the space that's left behind when somebody has a table and chairs license to allow people to walk wheel or cycle going past and the national requirement is that there shouldn't be an obstruction but the bar to it counting as a legal obstruction is actually quite high and there are many places where we obviously want to leave more space than this and I know in fact in practice that for example in front of bills that has been done. What I wanted to do was to ensure that when an applicant comes to us they are clear about the expectation of the amount of space they should be leaving and that we should be more ambitious explicitly so than merely not to create a legal obstruction and there is guidance on both walking and cycling that's now available. I note your response that West Sussex are consultees on this but I'm not convinced that their response is going to go beyond the legal minimum here and it appears to me that as a local planning authority with a responsibility for the public realm and how our urban and areas and villages work that we have a perfectly reasonable ability to aim higher than the absolute minimum requirement. In fact that's the point of these regulations that there is some scope to vary from the minimum so I'm seeking that we actually try to explicitly ensure that we encapsulate in the way we put out the documentation a way to ensure that we are meeting the new standards and guidance, the latest standards and guidance for walking, wheeling and cycling and make it clear. Is there a way that we can we can do this? Previously Councillor, I don't know whether you're aware of crates for instance. Crates made an initial application which is going to extend right out and would have created awful lines of sight. Nigel Weston who works a local authority has extensive experience in this field and we worked with crates to relocate their location although they weren't happy about that that was supported by county as well so there is scope for us to manage expectations and try to create some balance. Yes I mean I'd say what I want to do is make sure that we actually are we're at the we're at the leading edge of doing this and that we are fully up to speed with the latest guidance on it because and we're not just relying on happening to have an officer who's particularly on the ball with knowing this that we've got a way that both the applicant and officers can look to see what they're trying to achieve and make it so that we don't have to go back and get it changed we can actually get it right first time. I understand your concerns Councillor. The issue I face is that every application has to be judged on its own individually and we are at the behest of county with regards to their expert advice which we should follow so it is somewhat difficult for us to usurp their position. We could perhaps be asking them to explicitly consider this guidance in their advice to us so that we're deferring to their expertise but pointing them in the direction we want to go. I misunderstood yes I understand entirely and that that really isn't an issue for me I'm more than happy to make sure that that happens. On a number of occasions we have encouraged county to respond to consultations where they've been under pressure and not and persuaded them to achieve the deadline so we're more than adept at encouraging county to meet with us at least play and play ball halfway. I'd also like to sort of thank you for your response on enforcement and you say that because this is a licenseable activity the enforcement falls to the licensing team. I'm aware of the issues we've had about enforcement for the new A board policy which I understand is going to be dealt with by the depot but with some where neighborhood wardens for example see issues that they can be eyes and ears and a word of friendly advice on the ground and I'm wondering whether we have scope to improve our enforcement beyond what your resources can manage on their own which is a yearly visit by using the neighborhood wardens and the bid ambassadors when we've got them and also by allowing members of the public to report directly to us online by looking at our website because we've got a really good report page and if we make it easy for people to report problems with tables and chairs licenses then it's an extra line of information for you. No that's a perfectly valid comments Councillor. We already work closely with our colleagues in the depot and more so with the wardens. Just for your peace of mind A boards are specifically precluded from being used for when you have a tables and chairs what people can do is put up their barrier can become their advertising so there's no need for duplicity for them. With regards to the final point of what the point was now oh the website website yes so the website we're currently trying to implement greater ability for customers to self-serve and report to us and that is one of the things that we can bring into our customer portal to allow them to do that. We already receive complaints about a variety of issues in the department upon which we act not just restricted to tables and chairs so the avenue is already there and I'm more than happy for people in the locality to be referred to that and to come and engage with us. And do you think that we'll be able to work with the wardens and bid ambassadors on this as well? I don't have a problem with working with them we just must make sure that their remit is clear they have specific roles and they are not there to enforce it would be much more of an advisory I would suggest more so perhaps advising us of a trans potential transgression so that we can point them in the right direction or take an action as appropriate. Thank you. Does anybody else have any comments or remarks? I have one. We mentioned this before in a previous meeting but I'd like to have it minuted so I'm going to express it here. It's for no from no fault of anybody's your department in this in this area is is quite under-resourced at the moment. Significantly so. And I know from meeting with the team and I know speaking with yourself that the workload is significant at the moment especially we're going to be talking about enforcement and all these things so I just wanted to know I wanted you to know that we we see that and that that is noted in this meeting. Thank you councillor. You're welcome. Okay so there's no no further comments then I will shall move and I'm going to make a recommendation that the licensing committee is recommending items one two and three to recommend to cabinet that the pavement licensing policy as set out in the appendix a is to be adopted furthermore to recommend to cabinet that the head of environmental health and licensing be authorized in consultation with the cabinet member for environmental health recycling and waste to make such minor amendments to the pavement licensing policy as may be required and to recommend that cabinet recommends to council that pavement license fees be set at 500 pounds for new applications and 350 pounds for renewal applications with effect from the 17th of July 2024. Can I have I'll propose that may I have a seconder? Thank you councillor Olsen. Are we all agreed? In that case with no further business the meeting is closed. Thank you. you you [ Silence ]