Transcript

Good morning, everyone. This is a meeting of the Licensing Act 2003 Subcommittee of the London Borough of Newham for a review of premises license Variety Foods 20 Carlton Terrace, Forest Gate E78LH. The review application was submitted by the Home Office. Please note that the meeting recording will be available after the meeting on the Council's YouTube channel. In accordance with the members of Code of Conduct, the three councillors on the Committee today are required to declare any relevant interests on any matter being considered at this meeting. I have no interest to declare. I have no interest to declare. No interest to declare. Thank you. I will now move to introductions. My name is Councillor Tony Wilson. I represent Becton Ward and I'll be chairing this meeting throughout. Councillor. Good morning. Councillor Jane Loftus, representing Plasso South. And Councillor Winston Vaughan, representing Forskate South Ward. Thank you. Pauline Hunt, London Borough of Newham, on the Case Officer for today. Thank you very much. Would you like to introduce yourselves as responsible authorities? I'm observing today from Home Office. Beanna Hughes, Chief Immigration of the Home Office, Immigration Enforcement. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Sheila Roberts, Director of Licensing and Regulatory Services, Newham. Thank you. Now, sir, would you like to introduce yourself? Neil Patney, Variety Foods. Thank you. Charmi Parikh, Variety Foods. Thank you. Nisha Parikh. Thank you. Olivia Davis, I'm the barrister representing Variety Foods. Thank you very much. I will now briefly run through the procedure of this meeting. The licensing case officer will present the report. We will then move to the reviewing officer from the Home Office. Members can seek clarification, so can the premises license holder on their representative on any of these matters. No other representations have been received in support of the review application. The license holder then presents their case. Finally, members may pass resolution to deliberate in private and exclude the press and the public, including the parties and their representative. The clerk and legal advisor will remain with members to provide advice on procedure and law. When the decision has been reached, the meeting will reconvene and the decision of the subcommittee will be announced in public. Full written copies of the decision will be sent to the applicant or license holder, responsible authorities and interested parties, usually within five working days. Parties who have taken part in this hearing may appeal against the decision to the magistrates court within 21 days. As this is an administrative hearing under the 2003 Act, we are not trained lawyers. So we rely on legal advice from our legal department, today represented by? Happy work. Thank you, Paddy. I would also like to inform all parties that we base our decision on written oral submissions. The clerk will take minutes of the meeting. Would you like to introduce yourself? Christina Elsat for Democratic Services. Thank you. If anyone in the paper wishes to ask a question during the meeting, I will ask them to raise their hand. I will ask them to raise their hand and wait to be invited to speak. I would ask that all mobile phones be silenced or switched off. Now, it has come to my attention that or Paddy, would you like to? Yes, I think there was an application prior to today for an adjournment which we suggested needed to be made in front of the committee. I'm prepared to make that now. And I think it's sensible to do that first instance. Okay, thank you. Thank you. The subcommittee will be aware that the license holder is involved in a parallel challenge to the civil penalty that's been issued by the Home Office. The license holder entirely refutes the basis on which the penalty has been awarded, and his notice of objection was rejected last week, and he is now going to exercise his right to appeal to the county court. So given that background, and given that the substance of the appeal against the civil penalty is not just about the amount it's about whether he is liable to pay it in the first place on the facts. And that's precisely the kind of case that an adjournment would be appropriate for now the power to adjourn a hearing is in regulation 12 of the hearing regulations. And in my submission, it is open to you today to commence this hearing as you have, and then adjourn it to a future specified date, by which time those parallel appeal proceedings will have been determined. There are three reasons why that is, I would say, what this subcommittee should do. Firstly, because the license order cannot substantively engage with it with this review until that parallel appeal process has been determined. He disputes the Home Office's case on the facts, as is made clear by the very detailed notice of objection that you have in your bundle of papers. His position is that he's not liable to have a civil penalty imposed on him, because in respect of every single one of the six allegations that found the civil penalty, he says that it hasn't been proved that he employed people with no rights to work. And the specifics is different for each of the six. There's no evidence of a contract of employment. The people simply weren't working there, or in fact, they did have sufficient right to work. It's perfectly possible that the license holders version of the facts will be upheld on appeal by the county court. None of us sitting here today can say one way or the other what the outcome of that appeal process will be. Secondly, it's not for this licensing subcommittee to determine the merits of that appeal. Only the county court can do that. He's made his case in those parallel proceedings, and he will make his case further on appeal, and it should be the county court that determines the merits of that appeal. It would be more efficient in the long run to adjourn this review. As you said, chair at the outset of this meeting, the license holder has a right of appeal to the magistrates court. If the outcome of today is an adverse decision against the license holder, for example, revocation, he can appeal. And if he does appeal, he can ask the magistrates court to stay that appeal pending the conclusion of the parallel Home Office appeal. And because magistrates court appeals are de novo hearings, they assess whether subcommittee decisions were wrong as at the date of the appeal. So if by the date of a future magistrates court appeal, the license holder has won his Home Office appeal, then he will certainly win his licensing appeal. Because if it turns out that the Home Office was wrong to impose a civil penalty, then by the time the magistrates court appeal, there'll be no other option than to conclude that it was wrong to take an adverse licensing decision against him. So it is more efficient, more sensible, and cheaper for everybody, for the license holder not to have to do that. And further, the normal cost protection that applies to licensing authorities on magistrates court's appeal, may not apply if a court agrees that the authority did not act reasonably in the course of events that led to that appeal. And in my submission, not adjourning when it was possible to adjourn, and you were invited to adjourn, might found such an application. So for all of those reasons, we say that it is more efficient, more coherent, and more sensible to just adjourn this review until that parallel process has worked itself out. And an interesting and useful point of comparison can be drawn between the situation that we're in here and an example that's given in the Licensing Act guidance. But paragraph 11.25 of the guidance makes the point that because licensing reviews are part of a regulatory process and not part of the criminal law, there's no reason why reviews need to be delayed pending the outcome of criminal proceedings. And I think that's a useful point of contrast for us today. Because it makes perfect sense that where, for example, you have a premises where a stabbing has occurred. You don't need to wait to see who, if anyone, is convicted for that stabbing to carry out a licensing review, because the basic facts have already been established and they're serious and they must be dealt with. But we say that's not what's going on here. We have an issue with that first factual stage. There is a very fundamental factual dispute between the license holder and the Home Office that hasn't yet been determined. The license holder's position is that the Home Office hasn't made out its case, i.e. that he hasn't employed people with no right to work. He is going to challenge that factual position in the county court, and it makes no sense at all for this committee to determine a review of his license until that process has run its course. So that's the basis on which we request an adjournment. Thank you. Just one question. You're saying that this is going to go to the case going to challenge and he's going to appeal at the magistrates court. So that was sorry. That was the hypothetical. If this subcommittee proceeded today and an adverse decision was made in relation to the license, it would be open to the license holder to appeal to the magistrates court. And I'm instructed he would do so that the Home Office appeal is a county court appeal rather than a magistrates court appeal. Right. OK. And over what span of time do you think this process would be? I'm afraid that's that's outside my knowledge. He has until the 28th of March to bring his appeal as to how quickly the court processes and determines it. I'm afraid, like any court process, it's a bit of a how long is a piece of string question. So it's impossible to give a specified date by which it would be determined. That's unfortunately not within any of our knowledge. OK. Obviously, this is something we will have to discuss. But in the meantime, yes, I was going to say, have you a response to the adjournment, the post adjournment? Yes, that's asking. I understand they objected to their civil penalty and I understand the Home Office issued their objection last week. This is not the first civil penalty that the business owners have been issued in the last year. From our first visit, as detailed in the review pack, they issued a civil penalty for employing illegal workers. They paid it so they understand the process. I understand this one is a larger value fine, so they might want to consider their appeal a bit more in a detailed way. The Home Office statement maintaining the decision and not going with their objection was also very detailed in response, and it refuted all the evidence they provided. They can go to a council court appeal. There's no time frame for how long that would take. The civil penalties process is completely separate to the last interview process, as I'm sure you know. The only common denominator is the fact that immigration enforcement made arrests of illegal workers at their businesses, hence both those courses of action. They are two separate things for licensing. We're looking at whether there are people working at the premises for the civil penalty. The Home Office is looking at whether we can prove a period of employment. They're two separate entities as far as well. Okay, thank you very much. Is there anything else you'd like to add? You okay? All right. Yes, please do. I don't know whether you can help the committee with. Has there been a recent example of an appeal to the county court and how long that took? If you can't, that's fine. But if you can help the committee with a similar case, it might be helpful. Within our ice team, we cover a certain part of London. I can't answer for the entire Home Office civil penalties. The civil penalty team are completely separate. Yes, they're Home Office employees, but they're an independent team. They're not associated with immigration enforcement. They review the evidence that as officers we record during our visit, and then they make a decision either way. They're not biased. And therefore, I've got absolutely no way of knowing whether there's a similar case precedent on the phone. Sorry. Nice. Okay. Are you happy with that? I'm okay. All right. So what we will do, we need to discuss this. So I'm going to adjourn the meeting. How long, Paddy, do you think? Well, you should stay in the building. Oh, definitely. Yes. I think it would be a good 15, 20 minutes. Right. So this meeting is adjourned. 20 minutes. We'll see you back here. Thank you. Hello. Thank you for your patience. We have made a decision. Would you like to read that? Please. The Thomas' Lifesmith folder, equal representative, has made a preliminary application for a journal licensing review for Variety Foods 20, Carleton, 7th, 8th, 7th, 8th of 8th, citing Regulation 12 of the Licensing Act 2003 of Graphic Experience, Regulations 2005. This regulation states that an authority may adjourn a hearing to a specified date while it considers this to be necessary for any representations or notice made by a party. The licensing subcommittee have carefully considered the representations made by the premise license holders, legal representative, and those by the Home Office representatives. It feels that they are able to consider the application today and it is not necessary for an adjournment. The licensing subcommittee are aware that the civil penalty issued as a result of an inspection at the premises on the 18th of October 2024 is a subject of challenge before the county court. The licensing subcommittee have taken into consideration that a final penalty of £40,000 issued on the 6th of September 2024, which was paid on the 29th of October 2024. This was a result of an acceptance that four illegal workers have been accounted at the premises on the 7th of June 2024. The licensing subcommittee were taken to 11.25 of section 1.8 guidance, which states that reviews are part of the regulatory process introduced by the 2003 Act and is not part of the criminal law and procedure. There is therefore no reason why representation giving rise to a premises license reviewed be delayed pending the outcome of any criminal proceedings. Paragraph 11.26 of section 1.8 guidance states that the licensing authority duty is to take steps with a view to the promotion of the licensing objectives and prevention of legal working in the interest of the wider community and not those of the individual license holder. Having read the documents provided in the agenda path, the licensing subcommittee feels that they are able to listen to oral submissions and make a determination to promote the licensing objectives. In all of these circumstances, they feel it is not necessary to adjourn the proceedings. Thank you. We are now going to continue. Before we go any further, this is on restricted. So it's closed session. Yes. Right. So sorry about that. Would you like to introduce your report? You come back on. Sorry, I didn't. The members of the. Thank you. Sorry, excuse me. Members of the licensing subcommittee asked to hear and determine an application for the review of a premises license for Variety Foods, 20 Colton Terries, Polish Gate E7, ALH, and any valid representation that had been made. The review application was submitted by the home office immigration team, the license, the council licensing team. This was received on the 13th of January, 20, 25. The application was advertised by the licensing team by means of noticing the immediate vicinity of the premises. The grounds for the review on the licensing objectives of the prevention of crime disorder. A copy of the review application is attached to Appendix A and supporting documents submitted by the Home Office are attached to Appendix 1A. There have been no letters of representation support or against the review. This license was grandfathered over from the previous justice license into the Licensing Act 2003 in the name of Mr. Kumar. And that an expedited review was received 2010 where the license was revoked. This was appealed. And on the 13th of June, 2011, the license was reinstated by the court with additional conditions. The license holder and DPS was transferred immediately after the appeal. A further transfer and change of DPS and transfer was received by the licensing team in September 2021 in the name of Nister. Sorry, if I pronounce that incorrect. This is the current license and DPS. A copy of the current license is attached to Appendix B. Area plan is attached to Appendix C. And a premises street view is attached to Appendix D. The members of this licensing subcommittee asked to hear the review application and any valid representations received from responsible authorities and interested parties and to determine the application. There have been supplementaries one is attached to the end of the report. There's another one that's been on a separate newspaper. And it's supplementary agenda item one. And I think everybody's received that. Thank you, chair. Thank you. I just have one question. And if you can just confirm this for me, I think I've seen impact somewhere. But just for confirmation and clarity. Can you confirm Vain Wholesalers Limited is trading as variety food stores? Is that what's on Companies House? Say again, sorry. Vain Wholesalers Limited. V-I-A-N. Can you tell me if that's recorded and correct on our records trading as? It's got variety foods limited. Right. Is the company. And the person, the director of that company is that gentleman. Is that correct? No. So Vain V-I-A-N. Yeah, the company name is Vian Wholesalers Limited. And it's trading as? V-Variety. V-Variety Foods. V-Variety Foods. If you can make a. Okay. Yeah, okay. Have you any questions on the report that Vain should? No. Any report? Can you just put up the pictures? It's not working. I can't link it. All right. As you go on I'll play about with it. I think because it's been so long I'll have to try and link it back up again. That's fine. Sorry, but as soon as there's a break, I'll give you a look. Sorry. Okay. Have you any questions regarding Colin's report you just set out? No? Have you any questions? Fine. Okay. We're going to move on to HMRC, but HMRC. Sorry, immigration. I'll get it right Monday. To present their report, but we're going into restricted information. So we're going into closed session. Okay. Yep. Thank you. Thank you everyone for coming back. We want legal advisor something to say. Yes, it's obvious from the initial discussions that the licensing subcommittee members are going to take a considerable amount of time to reach a decision on this matter. And in all of those circumstances, we're going to close the meeting now, and the notice of determination will be sent out within five working days to all parties. Thank you very much for coming. And this meeting is now closed. You may leave the building. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.