Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the interaction between licensing extensions and planning restrictions on operating hours; and the potential impact of this interaction on hospitality businesses.

Section 172 of the Licensing Act 2003 allows the Secretary of State to make a Licensing Hours Order to extend operating hours on a national basis for occasions of “exceptional international, national or local significance” in England and Wales. National licensing hours extensions provide many benefits including enabling local communities to come together to collectively celebrate important events, providing efficiencies to both businesses and local authorities, and saving businesses the cost of the temporary events fee in those cases. The national licensing extensions we have put in place for the men’s football World Cup have been welcomed by fans and hospitality businesses alike.

Licensing hours orders do not override locally applied licence conditions which ensure the licensing objectives are effectively upheld. Nor do they override planning rules and regulations which operate separately from the licensing regime as they cover different, albeit related, matters. While this means a small number of licensed premises may not be in scope of a licensing hours order, the Government is clear that these orders still provide significant benefits to many licensed premises. Any premises which is not in scope can apply for a Temporary Event Notice for a small fee of £21 if they wish to do so.

Decisions to extend licensing hours on a national basis are preceded by a consultation with respondents usually including representatives from the hospitality sector. Extensive discussions with the hospitality sector about the licensing regime also took place as part of the DBT-led Licensing Taskforce which published their report last autumn. This was followed by a Government call for evidence on the licensing regime which attracted over 2,000 responses.