Transcript

Hello and good evening and welcome to this meeting of the licensing committee. This meeting is being webcast and some officers may be accessing virtually. Please bear with us in case we experience any technical difficulties. My name is Councillor Morris McLeod, I'm chairman of the licensing committee. Members of the committee, I will now call your names in alphabetical order. Please switch on your microphones and confirm your attendance. Starting with Councillor Burchill. Good evening. Councillor Brooks. Good evening. I have apologies, okay, so moving to Councillor Humphreys. Present. Councillor Lawless. Present. Councillor Marshall. Present. Councillor Mayorkas. Here. Councillor Pridham. Present. Councillor Tiller. Present. And Councillor Verathiraj. Good evening, everyone. Good evening to you all. I have apologies from Councillors Paul, Justin, French and Davis. I think that's everybody, yeah. Okay, members are reminded to ensure microphones are turned off unless you're speaking. And when called to speak, every time you do so, please state your name for people watching at home. Please bear in mind the committee remains -- must remain core at all times. I think we're actually looking pretty solid on that. Thank you everybody for making the time, so I won't go into that. We have a number of officers present who will introduce themselves when they address the committee. So moving on, agenda item one, the minutes, so the minutes of the last committee meeting held on the 16th of July are in your packs. Has anybody got any issues on the updates, any questions about those minutes? Put them all together if there are any. Wonderful. In that case, then, can I sign them as a correct record of the minutes? Thank you, everybody. Okay, so declarations of interest, are there any declarations of either pecuniary or other registrable or non-registrable interests? Thank you, everybody. Okay, so now we move on to the statement of our licensing policy and principles on the gambling act. Caroline, our office, Caroline Sharkey, our licensing manager, Caroline Sharkey will have a short intro on this. Thank you, chair, and good evening, members. I'm just going to give you a summary of the report because I'm conscious you've read it through, so I'll just give you a summary of what we're considering tonight. Under section 349 of the gambling act, the council is required every successful period every three years to prepare a statement of principles that they propose in applying and exercising their functions under the gambling act, and we are required to publish it. So the next successful period, that's on the 31st of January, however, the statement has to be adopted by 31st of December, and it must be published at least four weeks before the date on which it comes into effect. The committee tonight has to consider the proposed statement of principles, and members may recall that on the 16th of July, the committee approved the draft statement of principle for public consultation, and the consultation chair took place between 23rd of July and 7th of October. We received four responses to the consultation, and these were through the online survey, and I might say at this stage, chair, from experience, we don't really get a lot of responses to the gambling policy, so four is quite a good number. The responses that were received, chair, are produced on pages 59 to 65 of the agenda. Of those who responded, chair indicated the general opposition to gambling premises in Wandsworth Borough, and concerns were raised about the impact of gambling on individuals, young people, the local community, particularly those who can at least afford it. However, chair, as I've laid out in the committee report, apart from casinos, the local authority is required under section 153 of the gambling act to grant an application unless there's a compelling reason not to do so, and if there's evidence that an application would undermine the licensing objectives. And also, under the gambling act, chair, we cannot just reduce the numbers of existing licensed premises. We can only do so if a review application was received, and that matter was referred to the licensing subcommittee to consider, and then whilst the subcommittee considers all the evidence, then they may choose that the last option were to revoke the license. So those are the only options available to the council. Some respondents, chair, raised concerns about the location of the gambling license premises, not to be in vulnerable locations where young people congregate. This information, chair, is included in the policy, and it's detailed under paragraph 15.21, and it's also detailed under appendix C of the policy as a local area risk assessment that applicants and operators have to have regard to before they submit any applications. Some respondents raised concerns that they've encountered individuals frequenting betting shops in the borough who are vulnerable and can't afford to lose their money in this way. We have encouraged residents to ensure that the report of these matters to us. I can confirm, chair, I have not received any reports, but what I can assure members is when we receive reports, we do visit, and we do visit with our colleagues from the gambling commission, as well as we do carry out proactive visits to licensed premises in the borough. So we have emphasized the need for the residents, or if ward members have got local residents reporting to report such matters to the licensing team, and the contact details and everything, chair, is produced under paragraph 24 and page 29 of the statement of licensing policy. At this stage, chair, we're not proposing to make any further changes to the policy that's already been consulted on, as it's worked really well, and tonight we are asking the committee to approve the statement of principles under the gambling act as set out in appendix A, and also to prove the proposal to reinstate a no casino resolution as required under section 166 of the gambling act. That's the summary of the report you have before you, chair, and I'm happy to answer any questions at this stage or any points of clarification. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ms. Sharkey. Does the committee have any questions on this? Councillor? Councillor Humphries? Thank you, chair. Just quickly, Ms. Sharkey. Thank you. It was a really good report. It was very thorough and all the rest of it, and as you just said in your summary now, although we didn't get a massive amount of response to consultation, as you said, that's actually not bad for us, but just on that, you do say it very clearly, as I said in the report about why we can't object to things and why we can and all the rest of it, but it does say in section 18 on the bottom of page 6, I just wanted to highlight that for clarity for anybody who might be interested, that you do say there very well that you welcome anybody with any concerns to get in such, as you just said, in your report, and I just wanted obviously we don't encourage frivolous or whatever inquiries, but I think if somebody has got genuine concerns, we'd never say to people, please don't flag it up, do flag it up, and then you as officers can make a professional judgment as to whether that's valid or not. So just to highlight that, which is stated in the report, which is to make sure people understand that they have got the option that they really want to. I think that was very well said, Councillor. Thank you. Let's see, Councillor Brooks. Thank you, Chair. Just a quick question about what makes a casino a casino. The definition in the paper is around the provision of casino games. Would a betting terminal sort of arcade style game ever become a casino game under the definitions we have? Thank you. Good question, Councillor. Well, I would say with the help of my legal advisor here, I'm putting on the spot, but really the ones in the betting shops, they have got casino machines, so, yeah, they are part of we have like adult gaming centres, they do have casino machines, and we have betting shops, but a casino is just a proper, pure casino, and from the best of my knowledge, I have to come back to you, the Government has prescribed which authorities can actually have those casinos, and to the best of my knowledge, again, they have prescribed it, and I don't think we could actually consider that because the super casinos have been prescribed in the legislation. So I hope I have answered your question, and you may be the ones that are on the betting when you go into a betting premises or adult game, they do have casinos, but they are not. The casinos are pure betting, and what a casino is, basically. Does that answer your question? Okay, thank you. Thank you. Can I, I think that's a brilliant question, I'm a bit unsure, so things like Aladdin's Palace, I don't know if that exists anymore, but down in Clapham Junction, that's what it was when I was a kid, it was just the rows and rows of those machines, that's not a casino, is that right? A casino is where, cards or, I am not sure what it is, so actual cards need to be involved. Okay, interesting, thank you. Councillor Sweet. Thank you, and apologies for lateness for the meeting, and I'm sorry I missed most of your presentation, you may have covered this question. My question was about the consultation response, obviously only four responses is a bit disappointing but also makes me a bit concerned that we might not have fully captured public views about a really important policy area for Wandsworth. Can you give any more clarity on why response levels were so low and whether you're satisfied that we have captured any public concern about gambling premises? Thank you, Councillor. Yeah, I did actually flag it up earlier when I was doing my presentation, I did say from experience the numbers we've got are quite, that is what you get on the gambling premises, and usually the only other thing I needed to add was gambling premises are very proactive in compliance because they are tiered in terms of regulations, the operators usually get operating licenses from the gambling commission, so they've got that regulatory framework to comply with, and then they get licenses from us, so they are kind of double enforcement, and we have to, so they have compliance with the gambling commission, and we provide that regulatory enforcement compliance, so they've got two tiered authorities to comply with. And in addition to that, I just wanted to let members know that we have, we do carry out proactive visits and we did the visits again so that I was confident in reporting to the members what the findings were, and I'm happy to report that they are, in terms of policies, local risk assessment, they're very compliant in terms of those test purchases, they are very compliant in comparison to the other licenses that we issue. In terms of the consultation process, it was, you know, it was wider, we sent it to all the responsible authorities, interest groups, as I've laid out in the consultation section of the report, and, you know, we advertise it on the website as well and sent it out all the operators and all interest groups in the community, but from experience the numbers usually do tend to be low with gambling policies, you know, in comparison to the licensing act like public pubs and restaurants, such like, would that help? Councillor? Yeah, that's very helpful and thanks for giving that reassurance around the level of, I suppose, monitoring that premises have in the borough. I guess, I still think four responses is on the low side for a borough of 320,000 people, and I just wondered whether we can do anything next time round, I guess it's a few years away now, to try to canvas more views from members of the public. I have to say, in my experience, people do feel quite strongly about these types of activities in their areas, so I was a bit surprised that the numbers were so low, even though you've given some reassurance. Absolutely, Councillor, yeah, I agree, I mean, next time the consultation, if approved, it will be another three years and we'll take that on board definitely, and perhaps we can have conversations with the ward councillors as well to ensure that their residents are more proactive in feeding back, but we'll definitely do that. Thank you, and again, obviously we want as much engagement as possible, we want our policies to be as robust as possible, so anything we can do to get more engagement is useful. Can I ask, what sort of response do we normally get, is that, because four does sound very small for 300,000 people, but maybe it's because the service is really good, what sort of level response do we normally get when we put these consultations out, do you know? Yeah, thank you, Chair, because we do cover, I've presented to other authorities, Richmond and Merton, as you know, with the regulatory services, the majority of responses, and from experience people just don't want gambling premises, those are the majority ones that we seem to get in terms of, you know, the gambling harm, and we do get responses on, like I did a recent presentation with Richmond where people just complained about online gambling, online gambling is not regulated by the licensing authority, it is a gambling commission function, so we can't do anything, and people do complain about lotteries, scratch cards, we can't regulate those, they are regulated by the government, so those are the kind of responses generally that you would tend to get if you're going out for public consultation. Yes, thank you, I suppose I meant when we've gone out to consultation on this before, what sort of response do we normally get? I mean, you might not know to be honest, but is it, is this like, oh gosh, it's fallen off low, or is it normally at this sort of level, you know, just so we can get an idea? Yeah, sorry, just to clarify, we would get like, you know, we would get like, for example, more, but they would all be themed along those subject areas, so you'd get like 10, for example, but they would all, most of them would be generally opposing to the licence premises, so the subject areas are kind of similar, but the numbers can be high, but the subject areas would be the same. Does that help? That does, thank you. Any more questions? Councillor. I just wanted to thank Ms. Sharkey for a good presentation, and it's really encouraging to hear that you say that most of the premises are pretty compliant, and also, I wanted to ask, do you visit these premises when you've had a complaint, or do you go and visit these premises just sort of on the spur of the moment, just to see if they are compliant? Alright, yeah, thank you, Chair. So we have two types of visits that we do. When we get a complaint, we definitely visit, that's a reactive, but in addition to that, we do proactive visits, so for example, we did proactive visits in July. I personally went out with the officers in Wandsworth and visited loads of licence premises. We targeted the premises that, for example, adult gaming centres, we went out and visited them just as a proactive visit to ensure that, you know, to ensure compliance and making sure that the records were correct in terms of refusals, challenging people that are aggressively betting on machines, and what those logs look like, and self-exclusion orders, those kind of things. So we were checking that they were in place, and that's why I can report that the procedures and policies we found when we visited these premises in Wandsworth were really good. I don't know if that helps. Thank you very much. Thank you. Any more questions? Okay, and I just want to add as well, I think that the way that our licensing team handles these gambling establishments is really good, and has been really good, that's not a party political point, it's been good for a long time. We've got well-regulated, you know, establishments that, you know, I don't get many complaints about them, which is, you know, I know over parts of the country where that's not the case, so I think that's well done to your team, thank you. If there are no more questions then, can we approve this statement on gambling policy? Thank you members. Okay, so now we're on to agenda item 4, which is a cumulative impact assessment. We've got a number of verbal updates. Ms Sharkey? Thank you, Chair. The cumulative impact policy, as members may recall, we reported that we were going to gather the information for members to consider, but we didn't complete all the granular data that we needed to provide to analyse the data in further detail in time for this committee. So what we've proposed to do, Chair, is to give the committee a snapshot of what we found and where we're going, and we're happy to take any comments from this committee so that when we meet again at the next meeting, you will get a full report outlining the proposed areas that we consider to have a cumulative impact in the borough. I have worked, Chair, with a consultant, so I've got one of the consultants, Sylvia, she will introduce herself, and we've got Alistair online. They've really helped to gather all the information that we did and the data analysis. They've done a lot of field research, which you will see in the report. So at this stage, Chair, I will perhaps hand over to Sylvia, who is going to take you through the presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Caroline. I have the presentation up on screen, and it shows you the contents we're going to run through, so the context of cumulative impact assessment, the methodology that we followed, some of our findings to date, summaries of the insights from all the areas that we've researched, and then some conclusions and questions. And I'd just like to thank you very much for having us along today, and also thank you to all the members and officers that have supported the process so far. It's been very, very helpful and useful for the project. Next slide, please. Just a reminder on -- I don't think it's come up onto the screen, Caroline, sorry. Just to the members. I'll read it anyway, because that's okay. Is it connecting? Okay. Well, I'll just read out what is a cumulative impact assessment. So the legislation states that a licensing authority may publish a document, which is a cumulative impact assessment, stating that the licensing authority considers that the number of licensed premises in one or more parts of the borough is such that it is likely that it would be inconsistent with the authority's duty to uphold the licensing objectives, to grant any further authorizations in respect of premises in that part or those parts. And as the committee, I'm sure, fully aware, there are nuances that can be applied to cumulative impact assessments in relation to the types of premises, et cetera, and the geographies that they apply to. We were asked by London Borough of Wandsworth to collate, analyze, and provide relevant data and evidence for inclusion in a report to enable the licensing committee to determine if there is sufficient evidence to consult on introducing one or more cumulative impact assessments for the London Borough of Wandsworth. The technology -- I don't think the technology is quite working. Does everybody have a copy of the report in front of them visible, just because I'm concerned when I go to the numbers it will be confusing if not? No, that's okay. It's working now, Caroline, I think. Great. So next slide, next slide, next slide, I think. Onto the methodology slide, please. Next one. Wonderful. Thank you. Okay. So just to give you an overview of the breadth of data and information we were provided to work with, we looked through, obviously, your statement of licensing policy and other relevant documents, such as your fantastic nighttime strategy that's recently been rolled out. We also had engagement and interviews with the police, community safety, rough sleeping colleagues, and public health, and thank you again for their time and input from your relevant offices. Crime and ASB data, and you'll see the timeframe for the crime and ASB data is the most up-to-date that we could access, and it was a 12-month period. And then the other ones are within the last financial year, so April 23 to March 24, we looked at CCTV incidents, noise data, street drinking data, London Ambulance Service, and then we also -- they were provided by the relevant service, so, for example, London Ambulance Service obviously provided their data. We also looked at the licensing database that's held by London Boroughs, ones with by Ms. Sharkey, and then we conducted some fieldwork overnight audits in all the different areas of interest, which I'll come on to shortly. So, in terms of initial findings, we've put up some heat maps here, which show all the different incident types that we've looked at grouped together. So, the first one is antisocial behavior and public order, and it shows you areas of concentration of these incidents. At the moment, it doesn't show you numbers, but we'll come on to those a bit later, but it just shows you where typically those incidents are concentrated within the borough. I must say this is 24 hours, so, you know, some incidents are probably slightly more relevant in terms of this policy towards the, obviously, the nighttime economy side of things, but, again, once we get the more granular data, we can start extracting a few more insights, but it gives you a very good overview of where some of these incidents occur. So, you'll see the, for the, oh, yes, so we've gone on to drugs positions and weapons. You'll see there tends to be kind of hotspot areas, if you like, around places like Tooting Broadway, around Clapham Junction, in some cases around Putney, ones with town, and Ballam as well. So, those are the areas that we've really looked at in terms of areas of interest. I think you can go on to the theft and robbery, and then, which tends to be the highest volume crime, and then violence and sexual offenses. The next slide gives you a bit more of a granular insight into what those incidents comprise, and as mentioned, they are 24 hours, so it won't always be relevant to cumulative impact. We are always asked the question of, well, have you looked at specifically alcohol-related ASB in crime, but we find that to be quite unreliable, because the way that that's reported, it relies on somebody to physically tag something as alcohol-related, and that's not always very reliable. So, we do look at other factors that, so if it's, you know, ASB that happens after six o'clock at night, and it's around a licensed premises, then, or in a town center, we tend to sort of flag that as probably alcohol-related. So, there was a few proxies applied to the data, but we use that because otherwise you'll see there was only 38 incidents across the whole borough flagged as alcohol-related ASB. Well, I think, I imagine that you can see that that's probably not accurate either. So, the figures lay somewhere in between the two, and in the table, you'll see that obviously we, as mentioned in some of the notes at the bottom, that it's 24 hours, covers all the categories, and with the granular data, we'll be able to pull some extra insights out, but I think the far right column is a really good sort of temperature gauge and a very good sort of shorthand to explain where the majority of the incidents are happening, alcohol-related, and so you'll see that the highest sort of percentage of crime out of, you know, percentage of the borough is Tooting Broadway, at 10.5 percent of all borough crime, followed by Wandsworth High Street, 8.1 percent, Putney at 7.9, Clapham Junction, 6.1, and Ballam at 5.9. Next slide, please, Caroline. Oh, I should mention, if anybody's got any questions along the way, please do ask me. Yeah. Just so I'm really clear as you go through this, that what you're showing us is all crime? Yes. Sorry, the crime in ASB, it's not. It's the percentage of – All crime in those categories, sorry. In those categories, yes, that's correct, yes. And do you – can you tell us what the kind of radius is for each of these locations that you've included? I think it – we come on to that later because we have drawn some boundaries around each area. So when we come to licensed premises by area of interest, towards the end, there's a sort of triangulation lines around the area. So thank you. So coming on to the next slide, we have included CCTV incidents, but a caveat there is clearly if there are more cameras in an area, they're going to capture more incidents. So that's quite subjective, but it gives – it adds to the picture, the overall picture. Obviously, the number of incidents per year that have been recorded by the CCTV team as alcohol-related, clearly alcohol-related, are quite low, which we would expect, but again, it's for context rather than for making a policy-based decision. Noise-wise, we always – every borough that we've ever worked with and every place across the country we've ever worked with, it's very challenging to record noise, particularly noise that you could attribute to cumulative impact because that tends to be in a town center area rather than, you know, the noises coming from the dark and dark. So it's very hard to accurately give a picture of noise, but your noise recording data is better than some that we work with, and we could pull out some insights there around, you know, sort of percentage of noise-related complaints in the evening and nighttime and which areas that they related to. So you'll see that Ballum has the highest number of noise reports, with a quarter of the total that were reported, partly at 14 percent, Tooting nearly 11 percent. That's Tooting, Beckham, Tooting, Common combined. Clapham Junction, 10 percent, and ones with towns, 7.7. Street drinking, the numbers are too low to really, you know, isolate anything of particular note, but we do like to look at that because, obviously, street drinking gives you a bit more of a flavor around off-license issues. However, it's not the only measure, and you'll see that a bit later as the police have given some useful insights into some of the thoughts they have around off-licenses. Alcohol-related call-outs, we have Putney at the highest number there of 16.2 percent of the total in the year, Ballum at 12.2, Tooting Broadway nearly 10 percent, ones with towns, 7.5, and Clapham Junction, 6.7. I think what's very interesting to me is that there's some areas that have shown high levels of crime may not have high levels of ambulance call-outs, and, you know, it's a very mixed picture in terms of there's not one clear area of the borough that has all of the incidents as they're kind of, you know, being the kind of highest presenting area, so that's quite interesting in and of itself. Any other questions at this moment? It could well be. Yeah, I was going to -- not a question, really, just helping me to think about these stats. All these areas are so different, so I'm thinking, you know, people going through Clapham Junction -- Clapham Junction gets blamed for stuff that might be nothing to do with any of our licensed premises. It's just a hub. How on earth do you sort of unpick that kind of intricacy? That is challenging. I suppose in the report, we've highlighted some of the reasons why some of the figures may be higher for places like Clapham Junction, so you are right, and also, for example, theft in Clapham Junction, as you expect, is huge, but that's because it's a huge station, isn't it, and that's where theft happens a lot, and that's one of the -- you know, I don't tend to use theft as a measure for cumulative impact because I feel that, you know, is that something that licensed premises and alcohol -- yes, there is a factor there, but it's a phenomenon that we're seeing everywhere for many reasons. But yes, we put some caveats in the report, and once we get the granular data, we may be able to get some -- sorry about that. We may be able to get some more insights. Sorry, Councillor. No, thank you. Sorry, I thought you were finished. I was going to comment on Councillor Brooks. Thank you. A similar question about other reasons why things might spike. Can the data ever capture whether things like a sporting fixture would be causing a spike in police call-outs or crime? I'm just thinking about sort of Fulham home games impacting on Putney or similar things like that or Wimbledon. Well, it could because we could assign -- we could look at certain dates and days of the week, and I actually used to live in Putney on Lower Richmond Road, so I know it very well, and I know how certain sporting events can affect footfall and incidents there. So if that was required, we could take some, you know, bigger sporting events and compare against different weekends, if that's important, because I imagine that, you know, it's welcome that there are those sports events, and there was a certain level of increase in footfall and therefore crime on those dates. Councillor Berkshire. Thank you very much. Could you just explain the CCTV data again for us? Yes. I don't know if my colleague Ali is on the call. I don't know if he can turn his microphone on and talk to us about CCTV because it was him that captured and analysed that data. Ali, are you there? Hello. I'm here. Can you all hear me, Councillors? Yes. We can. Okay, thank you, Chair. Well, just very briefly, the CCTV incidents over the course of the same 12-month period, which have got a clear alcohol-related issue, that could be someone leaving a pub and drunkenly staggering around, it could be street drinkers in certain parts of town centres who are drinking and perhaps are causing a nuisance, leaving street drinking detritus about, those sorts of things. I think the problem with CCTV data is it's not a census of all of the problems. It depends on the number of cameras that you have there. It depends on how much resource you put into monitoring all of the cameras. But essentially, there's quite a low number there. In some other boroughs, they have a lot more cameras, and they may pick up a lot more incidents. Someone like Westminster, very surprisingly, you might be surprised to hear, don't have any cameras. They don't have a CCTV system in Westminster anymore, so they don't have any data around this. But essentially, Councillor, they are those incidents across that year that had a very clear alcohol flag next to them. But it is a low number. Thank you. Councillor, do you have a follow-up? Yes, it's just an interesting piece of data that it's presumably all of those incidents must be caught somewhere else within the data, or are they just seen, have they just been seen on the CCTV, but the police haven't been involved, or the ambulance, or the... Are you asking because... I just don't quite understand why we've got it there, because I can understand why we have everything else. No, I think I'm on the same confusion as you in that what counts as a CCTV incident, because these aren't police reports, these aren't... So is that just someone seeing something on CCTV and writing it down? What is an incident? That's what we're asking, isn't it? Yes, it's a very good question. In terms of the crossover, yes, if it's a very serious incident, for example, then you may find that it's replicated in the police data, because the police have been called out, the same with, for example, a highly intoxicated street drinker or someone who's been in a pub who's a vulnerable person who's been picked up because the ambulance service have been called in, that might cross over into there as well. But most of them, in my experience of working in other locations, will be sort of fairly low-level stuff that may not have resulted in a call to the London Ambulance Service or to the police. What I think might be useful in the final report is to look at the qualitative descriptions which are usually alongside them and help us understand what's actually going on with those incidents. And if I can recommend that we do that, obviously anonymised for any personal details, that might help you as councillors understand what these incidents are and I'm happy to do that for you. That's helpful. Thank you. Councillor? Councillor Humphries. Thank you, Chair. Just a quickie. I don't envy your job on this one. It's a tough task. There's an awful lot of data to capture and how to extrapolate that into something meaningful, but it's all very interesting stuff. I just wondered, again, sorry if you're going to cover this later on, but going back to the geography kind of thing, obviously you're focused on, understandably, on the five town centres, which are the biggest areas in the borough, but I was just thinking about some of the secondary frontages and secondary town centres and obviously, pro rata, those levels of incidences will be lower, but some, perhaps some of those might be because it's a smaller area. I'm thinking of somewhere like, being quite parochial, quite close to me, like Earlsfield Town Centre, which is a secondary high theatre. And so it's a smaller, people expect a level of activity, shall we say, somewhere like Clapham Junction. It's such a busy area, but somewhere that's a smaller area and perhaps the concentration of places in the smaller area might be either flags up more things to people because they're not so used to it, or is it sort of how do you adjust that pro rata to the level of intensity of the issues? I'm thinking there's quite a lot of bars and late night pubs in Earlsfield and there was a spike some months ago on issues and things. It's not constantly like that, but I just wonder how you rationalise that against the main town centres as far as which is more intense, perhaps, rather than just based on the literal numbers. It does. Ali, would you like to take that? Yeah, I'm happy to do that. Yeah, I think that's an interesting question, Councillor, in terms of, you know, proportionality and everything is relative, right? So what we've looked at is, you know, as Sylvia's set out the actual, you know, the raw numbers of crimes and where they are. And we'll give you much more granular detail about that when we've unpicked what we've what we've been given. And then we overlay that with where the licence premises are, clusters of those. Okay. And we break that down by the type of licence premises. So, for example, it's unlikely that a small neighbourhood restaurant is causing or is likely to cause problems or their customers are likely to cause the problems that a nightclub or bar that's open till two or three o'clock in the morning. I'm not saying that that couldn't be the case, but it's unlikely, right? So part of the mapping that we'll show you and we'll produce in the final report does set out quite granular detail at street level about what the crime is and what licence premises are there. I think the question you ask about the sort of relative impact of problems that might be associated with the licensed economy and perhaps the impact on local residents who might accept more of it because they've moved into a town centre that is generally more boisterous versus somewhere like Ersfield in your own patch, which is more traditionally a bit quieter. I think it's really hard to capture that. We can go and have a think about it and come back to you. But it's the first time it's ever been raised in that sort of detail. So it's a new one for me. I'm happy to give it some thought with Sylvia for you. Thanks very much. That's great. I'm glad it's on the agenda. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. Thank you very much. With sort of where we're deciding which areas could be that we're going to do a cumulative impact assessment on with regards to areas that are on the edge of the borough, to what extent do we consider activity that might be generated by licensed premises that actually sit just over the other side of the line? So the reason I'm asking this is that my ward obviously is right up against Lambeth and recently, you may have seen it in the news, there was a knife attack where one person sadly died and that's been linked to a licensed premises that is literally a few metres over the other side of the borough boundary. Equally, there are licensed premises that are just on the Wandsworth side and I wonder to what extent you take into account that activity as well. I can perhaps answer, Councillor. In relation to cumulative impact, what we're trying to look at and you will see the data as the presentation goes along, the main basis of a cumulative impact is where we've got a saturation of licensed premises and within that, we have to link it to those themed incidents and that's what a cumulative impact policy is about because we are acknowledging that the accumulation of these licensed premises in one area is having an adverse reaction to all these incidents. So we cannot, I think what we need to be careful in identifying these areas, we cannot just pick one area and one licensed premises, that probably we could be challenged to say, well, the whole basis of a CIA is an accumulation of licensed premises which will be presented later on. Does that help? Sort of, but I guess if there are, if for instance, there's a few licensed premises as is the case in that area on one side of the borough boundary and another case on the other and then some on the other, do we take that whole area into account or is it just the site or is it just the licensed premises that happen to be on the Wandsworth side? Yeah, I think we, yeah, we would take one area within the land, within our, our borough, but I think what we need to also remember and I'm quite happy for my legal advisor to chip in on this, there are other ways in which we can control licensed premises. A CIA is not the only option. We can look to review that license, which will come before you members. So there are other options that we can consider and also it's important to emphasize that once you have a CIA, CIA cumulative impact zone, it doesn't necessarily mean that people, you can't have licensed premises. The applicants will have to have robust operating schedules. All it does, it gives you a safeguard to say we've designed this area as a cumulative impact zone. Therefore, if you want to trade within that area, you need to provide a really good operating schedule, which will convince us that you're not going to have that cumulative impact. And also if we get the applications and we've not received any, any representations, we are legally required to grant that application. Hi, Guy Bishop, the legal advisor to the committee regularly. What you're looking at here in terms of cumulative impact assessments are those saturated areas. Okay. Now where you've got something that happens over the border or something like that, but the, but the premises in your borough that are affected aren't saturated, then what you will probably be looking at in a licensing subcommittee, if there's an application for a license, for example, is whether there's still an issue of cumulative impact outside of whatever saturation you may have. And you can do that. So it's, what you're doing here is more looking at the saturation of particular areas from the data and formulating a plan in terms of how those applications are dealt with. Whilst in a licensing subcommittee meeting where an application is made for a particular premises, you would say, okay, although this area doesn't have a saturation and therefore doesn't, isn't within the cumulative impact assessment, we have got data that's probably produced to us by the police or licensing officers or whoever it may be in a representation that can suggest to us that there's a particular problem we need to address. And that in that particular very small locality, which means you can then make the right decision whichever way you want to make it. If I'd say it wouldn't be part of the CIA, it would just be part of the information that's provided when a certain decision is being made. Exactly, yes. That makes sense. Thank you. I think that's a really, and for clarity I think that's a really good question. Although that's not included here, we don't want residents to think, oh, I live on a road, there's eight bars over there that happen to be in Lambeth and they're really noisy and someone wants to open a new bar here and one's going to say, oh, you've only got one so you're okay. You know, we as a committee will then take that sort of thing into account. But thank you. Just going to add something that might help you there. What you could do in your cumulative impact assessment is to say certain areas in other boroughs are an impact possibly and just to sort of note it. And that will then help you if you have a licensing subcommittee that needs to make the particular decision if there is evidence to support it. Thank you. I can't remember if we interrupted or if you got to the end of... I've got a few more slides if that's okay with everybody. So we also conducted some more qualitative interviews. We received some information from members and thank you very much for taking the time to speak to your communities and to give us your views and experiences of, you know, things that you often have conversation with constituents about. We also spoke to local policing teams, your community safety team for the local authority, rough sleeping colleagues and public health. So nine of 58 ward council has provided some information and anecdotal evidence from constituent feedback. So we've sort of brought that to gather into some takeaways by location. So I shouldn't use the word takeaways. That's relevant in this committee. So the primary concern for the police, well, number of off licenses in general across the borough was mentioned as problematic by a number of your colleagues and members present, I believe. The primary concern of area for police is teaching Broadway and they say that's their main sort of draw on resource on Fridays and Saturdays concerns included alcohol related violence, sexual offenses and theft from vulnerable people between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. in particular. Lots of issues around late night food premises post 11 o'clock Fridays and Saturdays being the peak night. Also aggressive begging was flagged as a concern by the police and the secondary concern by the police is Clapham Junction. Obviously that's expanding in terms of its nighttime economy, a large transient population alcohol related violence against the person which happens day and night. And again, we'll look at that through the granular research. Um, and, um, also have, you know, we are taking on board the fact that it is a junction, it is a through way. Um, and looking at how we can, you know, represent that in the report in a, in a, in a fair way, um, sort of tertiary level of concern for the police, uh, all in one pot, if you like, were um, Tooting back Putney High Street, North Cut Road and Wandsworth town. So they all said that that those kind of in their own ways had their own issues that presented for police resourcing. If we can go to the next slide, please. Um, in terms of primary concern for members from the Putney areas from Putney wards include Putney High Street. So concerns about assault, noise, intoxication and vandalism, particularly after venues close concerns around overcrowding and unpredictable behavior, noise, litter and road safety with groups sort of spilling out into the road is, you know, clearly under the influence of alcohol. The number late night food venues was a particular concern and was also noted by us through our overnight audits in those areas. Now, they're just, it does seem to be a particular saturation of those in Putney off license and rough sleeping is an issue and also begging, which was also seen on observations. Um, finally, the police mentioned the management of dispersed in particular on North Coat Road is at the weekend is a challenge. Um, any comments or thoughts around those? Uh, cancel the loss. Um, I have a question about, um, toting broadway, but it probably goes wider across the borough. Um, I wanted to walk about with one of our licensing officers to some of the off licenses there and some of the shops you can tell, take it very seriously. Um, and the person who is behind the counter or is in the shop is like the manager and understand exactly what's on the license. Other licenses seem to be quite old though and had, for example, the sale of high strength beer in, in one license we visited was allowed up until 11 o'clock. But that premise is open from 11 p.m. to two as well in the morning. And I imagine the people working there have no way of checking. Actually, it's gone past

1. Can I serve this? Can I sell this 9% kind of alcohol? Um, so what can we do about those? Cause it seems like those licenses are quite outdated, I think. Um, and then what are we doing or what can we do in this to make sure that they're meeting the minimum pricing of those? Cause I think it's meant to be a £1.55 a can or something. Um, and there are some shops in toting broadway that do like two for £2.50. Um, so yeah, anything around that would be really good. Thank you, Councillor. Um, I think I'll answer that from the licensing perspective, because what we do is we do visit license premises and some of these conditions were, um, added on because that's what the applicant volunteered and some of them end up at committee. Some of them, as I explained earlier, get, gets granted if we don't receive any representation. But it is absolutely important that the license holder, including the designated premises supervisor, ensure that all the staff at the licensed premises who are working for them are fully aware of what the conditions are. Uh, that's an expectation and it's their responsibility because they would be, um, putting their license at risk if those conditions were not upheld. So we would look at that. Uh, and the other option, if you, if a premises license applications came, uh, if the, the only way we could remove them is by either we've, um, and we do this through action plans, we can ask, engage with them if we've received a complaint to review the condition, make it more tightened, uh, dependent on what the issues were or if, uh, if they apply for a variation and the variation applications was before the committee, they could look to review, um, the license conditions and make them a bit more, um, um, robust. But we can't just, unfortunately we can't just remove those conditions, but we can, we could, um, attend, do a compliance visit ensuring that the license holder and the designated premises supervisor is making sure that they're having those conversations with staff. Um, in terms of minimum pricing, it is a mandatory condition. And one of the things we do is to ensure that that condition is upheld through, through the licensing visits or if we received a complaint, we would then look to ensure that those conditions are being upheld. But again, we can't just remove that condition of the license. Um, yeah, so, so just to, just to reaffirm what, what that sounds like, and I think maybe this is just the case is that unless some, unless something happens, unless someone reports something, if there's a shopkeeper that's bending those rules in some way, we don't really know you do it. And so unless, unless, unless there's a response, it's like a tree falling in the woods. And, um, we do know when we are doing, I know we've done a lot of work on, uh, two team Broadway. So we've done proactive visits around that area because as, as you can tell from the presentation, it's the hotspot area. So we've done like a community partnership visits with community safety. And so we've done visits in that area. But in generally we can have a license premises where we've got 1400 license premises in one's with, but you know, when we get a complaint, that's when we review them. But we do do proactive visits as well. Thank you. And just to clarify, proactive visits is you turning up without them expecting to them to, and you check in, but they're doing the right things. Yeah, exactly that. Thank you. Just a quickie to follow up on that. Yeah. I know sometimes we do like mystery shopping don't we as well. And so I don't really with cigarette sales and stuff and things like that. So that's another way you can, uh, check out what's going on on the particular hotspot. Sorry chair, Sarah Quinn, head of commercial regulation. Can I just add on this, that all of this data that we're gathering is being a really, really useful exercise. So we have got thoughts about being a lot, well, we are very sort of Intel and data led. So as we get into a lot more of this granular data, it will, we'll feed back to a lot of our offices and enforcement teams and partnership working. And we can look to where we then put our resources going forward. Um, we do rely on, yeah, complaints and information coming through cause that really does help us target it. Um, and we do do yes, test purchasing with our trading standards team and those sorts of things. So hopefully all of this will feed into a much bigger picture going forward. Thank you. Uh, more questions? No. Um, I, there's, is there, there's, this is just accepted as, um, uh, this is the question here is, is this accepted information? Cause it's not a natural vote yet. Is it? So is it accepted? Thank you. Yeah, indeed chair. Would you have a few more slides? Would you like me to just feel like Lou Peter? I'm so sorry. I thought, I thought we'd, uh, I apologize. Um, on we go. I'll take back that, uh, acceptance of information. I'll, I'll, I'll wrap up reasonably quickly, but, um, we thought it would be useful just to show you, um, this is a map that shows the density of licensed premises across the borough. So, um, it lists by a total number of premises in the wards that typically we would allocate towards those towns, um, the town centers. Um, so it gives you the total figures there. Um, and it's interesting as teaching has got obviously the largest number, but that's mainly due to the market having quite a large number of licenses as you'd expect with sort of smaller, um, you know, stores, et cetera, storeholders having the licenses in a concentrated area. Um, the next slide, the next few slides may be a bit more insightful and it was, um, in answer to one of the members questions earlier around, uh, sort of triangulating those hotspots and identifying, um, the geographies in which the sort of density of issues happen. And so obviously if you do look to publish a cumulative impact assessment, it's important to specify the geography and that's how these types of maps and this, uh, sort of the lines that's been drawn by one of your very clever GIS analysts in the, um, local authority team. This sort of highlights where their specific incidents, where the concentration of incidents are happening. So we tend to overlay, uh, the data sets and bring that together. So the final report will have more than just, um, crime and ASB incidents, but it gives you a flavor. Um, and we also looked at the yellow dots that are inside the boundaries, if you like, uh, all the licensed premises that sit within those boundaries and underneath there are tables which break down by, uh, licensed by sort of a premises type, if you like, um, how many licenses sit within each. I won't go through them in detail, but hopefully, um, everybody has a copy of the presentation and I believe maybe Carolyn may be sending that out afterwards too. So, um, it might be something you may wish to look through and it will feature in the, in the final report, but it gives you an idea of, you know, the kind of geography, if you were looking at community impact assessment in any of these areas where that boundary may lie. Um, the next page has the final three town centers in that same vein. Okay. The final slide, we tried to put something together here that gave you more of a pen picture of each area that brought together all of these findings and, and, and, um, all of this data. Again it's a mixed picture and as one of your colleagues mentioned earlier, sometimes things like noise can be around, you know, whether there are particular residents groups that are a bit more organized around how they report things. Some residents groups are aware that, you know, you report something once and actually you need to report it every single time it happens and then it becomes flagged by the police or whatever and it gets responded to. So we do see sort of more, sometimes you wouldn't necessarily, I totally think an area experience more noise or more issues in another, but it, it flags in the data because of a, you know, a very active, for example, an active residents association or something like that. But according to the data, um, and the, uh, interviews we've had with the police, then Clapham junction obviously flagged as an area of concern. Um, it has the highest number of, um, licensed premises of all five areas of, you know, the hotspot area. So not necessarily the, the wards that comprise the Clapham junction area. But when we triangulated all the, the incidents, um, the number of licensed premises in the Clapham junction kind of area of interest is the highest number of, uh, of, of, uh, premises, but the lowest number of alcohol related ambulance call outs and second to those number of noise complaints tooting Broadway had the highest volume of crime of all areas researched, um, and flagged as a primary over concern for the police and uses most police resource at weekends levels of noise and alcohol related ambulance call outs were mid table compared with other areas researched central Ballum had the highest number of noise complaints, but lowest crime in ASB and not flagged as a hugely significant concern by police ward counselors or others interviewed once with high street, not again, raises a particularly high level of concern by anybody interviewed and the second highest volume of crime and the lowest number of noise complaints. Second lowest number of alcohol related ambulance call outs. Um, one of your colleagues flagged a particular premises singled out as receiving regular noise complaints, but as Caroline mentioned earlier, there are options there for sort of more targeted enforcement where it can be identified that it's a singular premises rather than a cumulative sort of impact of a number of premises. Part needs probably, um, an area that's of quite a lot of interest in terms of we did have a, um, a collective response from a number of counselors and we thank you again for putting the time, taking the time to put that together. There's quite a lot of anecdotal evidence from residents who were concerned about a number of incidents as referenced earlier. Um, and there was also a very helpful suggestion around how members thought that could be addressed. You accumulative impact assessment. So they asked premises selling alcohol and not licensed beyond 1 a.m. And the takeaways with late night refreshment licenses cannot operate beyond midnight. Um, they also are asked for increased enforcement, um, uh, particularly around noise. And they also asked that the suitability of granting additional licenses in the area is considered carefully given the already substantial impact. These reported concerns about aggressive begging, rough sleeping, and they linked that to the number of off licenses. And I'm going to hand over to Caroline for the next step slide. Thank you. This is hopefully the last slide chair. So the next step is we're going to, uh, report, pull on, um, a full report to the next licensing committee. And in there will be making some recommendations for members to consider, uh, at the moment with the evidence that we've got. It's it's showing that perhaps we need to look at tooting Broadway off licenses, but within a particular zone and also looking at Patney High Street, looking at late night refresh meant within a particular street or zone as highlighted in the report. And we'll be putting those recommendations to the committee at the next meeting and asking whether they could approve the information and got public consultation. If we do that, it will be a maximum of three months. And after that time will be presenting the comments received from the public consultation. And the committee will will be asking whether they would approve the cumulative impact proposed community of impact zones and then would have to refer to the council for the adoption. Thank you. And I think it's worth adding as well. I know that this is, um, taken longer maybe than we'd hope, but there's so much data to bring in here and and and it's one of those things that if we if we don't get it right, we can be challenged legally and all sorts of problems. So, um, again, thank you for putting the effort into into into making sure that this is this is right. And thank you for colleagues across the board for making efforts to make sure residents are supported and looked after. I'm sorry, I should say, Do we have any more questions? And I'll be finished officers presenting everything you need to present. Thank you. Okay. So do we accept this of information? Thank you very much. Um, that concludes this meeting. Thank you, everybody. And thank you for your time.