Local Government and Communities Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Official Report 660KB pdf

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Alcohol Licensing

Item 2 is an evidence session on alcohol licensing in Scotland. The session was delayed due to a Cabinet reshuffle last year. I welcome the Minister for Community Safety, Ash Denham, who now has lead portfolio responsibility for alcohol licensing. I also welcome Peter Reid, who is team leader in the Scottish Government’s criminal law, practice and licensing unit.

I invite the minister to make some opening remarks.

Thank you for the invitation to appear before you this morning to discuss alcohol licensing. I understand that the committee wants to discuss community involvement in the alcohol licensing process and other issues relating to licensing that were raised in the committee’s evidence session last year.

As members know, the committee had been due to have a session last year with the then Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Michael Matheson. As a result of the reshuffle, that session was postponed, and the portfolio responsibility that today’s meeting is concerned with has been passed to me, as the Minister for Community Safety.

It might be helpful if I provide a quick overview of the regime. As members will be aware, the main piece of legislation that controls the sale of alcohol in Scotland is the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005, which came into full effect in late 2009. That has since been added to by primary and secondary legislation, with the most recent piece of primary legislation to make changes to the alcohol licensing regime being the Air Weapons and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2015.

Day-to-day responsibility for the administration of our alcohol licensing regime rests with licensing boards. The boards are made up of elected councillors from the relevant council, but they are independent public bodies that are separate from the local authority. All boards have a wide discretion to determine appropriate licensing arrangements according to local needs and circumstances and their own legal advice. The key strategic role of a board is the preparation of the licensing policy statement for its area. Within that policy statement will be an overprovision assessment, which will state whether the board considers there to be overprovision of licensed premises in its area.

It is important to emphasise that licensing boards have responsibility for individual licensing decisions and that those are not issues in which the Scottish Government intervenes. The role of the local licensing forum, which I know was a topic that came up in the previous meeting on this subject, is to keep under review the operation of the licensing system in the area and to give advice and recommendations to the board. I am sure that we will discuss that further today.

I know that there are a number of other issues that the committee might want to raise, and I am happy to take any questions that members have.

We will move straight to questions. Annabelle Ewing has the first one.

Good morning, minister. I understand that the draft revised guidance for licensing boards is out for consultation at the moment, and that the role of local licensing forums will be considered within that consultation. What do you see as the possible outcome of that discussion? What role should local licensing forums play? I think that people feel that there is bit of confusion about the role of the forums; indeed, there is a question as to whether the role could be strengthened in various respects. Can you give us your initial thoughts on that?

The role of the forum is to review the operation of the licensing system in its area and to give advice and recommendations to the board. My view is that the local licensing forum has a vital role. The forum represents different communities of interest and ensures that a number of views are given to the board and are considered and debated. That is important.

It is good for forums to be as proactive as possible in encouraging a diversity of people to attend meetings, so that they get a breadth of views. The committee will have seen in the evidence that it took last year that there is some very good practice out there. I was struck by the example of the forum that went out to a local high school to speak to modern studies students. The forum took suggestions from the students about a local event and found the exercise quite useful.

There is evidence that forums are working really well in some areas, but not so well in other areas. That is where the guidance on which we are consulting will come into play. My officials have been working with several stakeholders over the past few months to get as much input as possible to improve the guidance so that we make it as clear and helpful as possible and get people to engage with it. Part of that guidance will be about helping boards better support forums in sharing good practice. I ask Peter Reid to give a little bit more colour to that.

The role of the licensing forums is set out in legislation and is not due to change any time soon—we are not currently working on another licensing bill.

Boards vary enormously in size and resources. There are options available to the very large boards to be proactive and do a lot of work. However, some boards are very small—there is one board that is responsible for fewer than 100 premises licenses—so they have a lot fewer resources available to them. From a national point of view, we understand that there will be a variety of levels of engagement and practice that are possible and appropriate at the local authority level.

The statutory guidance that we are working on includes a chapter related to licensing forums, encouraging good practice and giving examples. As the guidance must reflect the underlying legislation, it is for licensing boards, although it may be that there is scope for other guidance for other audiences. That is something that we might draw out of the consultation responses, and we would be happy to look at that.

We would like the forums to operate effectively. We see that there is good practice and we would like to encourage local authorities to adopt good practice.

The suggestions that the committee heard included training for forum members, access to budget, better guidance—as you say, the Government is looking at that—and perhaps even a national support body. Are those suggestions under consideration?

I have been active on my local community council for more than a decade and, from time to time, I attend my local licensing forum as an ad hoc member, which means that I have a degree of familiarity with what happens on the ground. My impression is that, as with all such engagement mechanisms, the forums can be quite reliant on the usual suspects: people who are retired or who are involved in quite a lot of groups. It is genuinely difficult to bring more folk in. We would be happy to consider things that work. The best source of such information would be the local authorities that have successful forums, as they can inform others about what seems to work well in their area.

Some ideas may not be appropriate for all areas of the country. I do not think that mandatory training for forum members would encourage more people to attend the forums. Offering more support and making engagement more meaningful when members are there might make more of a difference. The local authorities will have plenty of experience of what works in relation to local engagement.

When will the consultation come to an end?

It ends on 11 June. We would encourage people who have views on the issue to get involved and give us their feedback, so that we can take it into account.

It is important to make that call to all the people watching our committee proceedings.

It is all well and good that there is an on-going consultation, but I have a concern. Let me give the example of a successful organisation in Fife. The Fife Alcohol Support Service, which celebrated its 40th anniversary last year, provides front-line counselling. Because it is on the front line, it will have lots of views on the issues that it deals with day and daily. Would it be possible to have a system in which organisations such as the Fife Alcohol Support Service can be involved? After all, they will have a lot to say. I sense that we are getting into the issue of public health, which I realise is not the minister’s direct responsibility, but how could we use the expertise that there is on the ground?

The organisation that the member mentioned could certainly be a forum member. I think that that would be a useful way forward, because it would mean that, as I said earlier, its expertise, advice and recommendations could be provided to the board.

Thank you.

Mr Reid talked about the difficulty of getting people to attend some of the forums. I certainly know from my experience of sitting on a licensing board that the forum in my area was not very successful; it hardly ever met, and it was made up of the usual suspects. I do not know what Mr Reid or the minister has found, but I certainly found a disconnect between the board and the forum, simply because hardly anyone turned up and not many people were involved. There might be good practice in some places, but there will be very bad practice elsewhere. What are your reflections on that?

I will bring in Peter Reid in a moment, but I would say that that is the point of updating the guidance. The really good practice that we have seen in some areas—where, for instance, the forums have a plan for the year, decide what they are going to look at, clearly engage and are useful to the people involved and provide good advice and recommendations to the board, with a good linkage between the two—is something that we would like to replicate across the country, and the guidance will contain examples so that we can share that good practice across Scotland.

Mr Simpson made an interesting point that prompts a number of thoughts. The licensing forum that I attend has quarterly meetings at the local council headquarters that are quite formal, with an agenda and a chair. It might well be that, in the modern age, that model of engagement is not particularly attractive to a lot of people. Indeed, it is clear that it is not, and we might need to think more creatively about how to bring in people in a meaningful way. A lot of people have a lot of opinions on and would like to engage with the issues, so there is probably scope to think about how we move on and what other approaches might be adopted.

We certainly found it difficult to interest young people. They should be interested, but you cannot force them to be. I think that you have to make this sort of thing interesting, and at the moment, it simply is not. Most members of the public will have no idea what the board does, and certainly no idea what the forum does, and that is a challenge.

I am sorry to go on, convener—

I am used to it. [Laughter.]

Speaking from experience, I know that the health board was not really engaged, and it should have been. Have you done any research across the country on the levels of engagement of different groups with the forums?

I am afraid that I have not got down to that level of detail. Alcohol Focus Scotland, which has quite close engagement with the forums, might have looked at the matter.

Forum membership should include a nominee from the health board. However, I hear what the member says; indeed, the same issue came up in the evidence that was taken last year. Some people found that, because the meetings were held in council chambers, it was quite an intimidating experience for laypeople who might not be used to that environment and might be a bit put off from going along or speaking up. We might need to think about how to make the forum meetings engaging, informal and welcoming.

The member mentioned young people, which is an issue that I have already touched on. I wonder whether, instead of waiting for young people to come to them, the forums need to go to the young people themselves—for example, by engaging with local modern studies teachers as a way of capturing the views of those young people. However, I agree that it can be difficult to attract young people to these things.

09:45  

Is there a danger that the forums are a tick-box exercise, so that the boards can point to their forum and say that they are engaging? The evaluation that was done by the monitoring and evaluating Scotland’s alcohol strategy—MESAS—group in 2013 highlighted structural issues with local licensing forums, including a lack of power and a lack of clarity about their role. Peter Reid said that there was no intention to bring forward legislation, but if the forums do not get those powers and that lack of clarity about the role remains, are they not just a tick-box exercise?

I do not think that they are a tick-box exercise. We have already covered the point that they are working well in some areas and not so well in others. As a Government, we can give help and support in that regard, and we are happy to do so. Officials have engaged with all the licensing boards and have offered them any support that they think would be useful. None of them has taken up that offer. The guidance also offers support, advice and clarity—

I am sorry to interrupt, but I think that that offer was in relation to personal licence holders rather than local licensing forums.

On engaging with licensing boards, I attend the quarterly meeting of the Scottish Society of Local Authority Lawyers and Administrators—SOLAR—networking group for local licensing solicitors to hear views and provide updates. I am engaged with that network and aware of the good work that it does. I take on board the concerns that it raises, and remain happy to do so.

You keep talking about examples of best practice, and it would be interesting to see further information in that regard. The boards are quasi-judicial. I have never attended a licensing board meeting, but I know that lots of lawyers go to them and that their members get in-depth training. To what extent do forums have any power over the boards? For example, when the Air Weapons and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2015 came in, a clear correlation could be seen between areas of high deprivation and poverty and overprovision of alcohol sales outlets. Are there any examples of forums being able to look at that kind of detail and influence those situations?

I will let Peter Reid answer that question.

We would expect the licensing board to engage with such situations. I cannot remember whether that is a statutory responsibility, but we certainly expect boards to engage directly with local licensing forums. Boards are also obliged to have an annual meeting with forum members.

We talk about boards having a quasi-judicial role. They have a role in relation to individual applications, reviews and so on, but they also have a more strategic role that is linked to the licensing policy statement and overprovision, as you mentioned.

The local licensing forum, which brings in a broad mix of people—from the police, the national health service, communities and the trade—gives the board a natural hinterland to fall back on and from which to seek views and challenge. That is a useful and valuable role for the forum. I would imagine that a licensing board might find it useful and invigorating to test out its ideas, approaches and thinking in front of a forum, to see the reaction that they generate. Most of us value engagement and the views of others.

Convener, I think that it would be interesting if the committee could get not only examples of best practice but the data on how the overprovision powers are being used. That would allow us to see the linkages with the forums in that regard and how things are working.

Witnesses to the committee agreed that support from local authorities, particularly in the form of staff time, was an important factor if forums were to be successful. Local authority services are under massive financial pressure. If we have forums that have some powers and a meaningful and clear role, will local authorities have the capacity to support them?

It is obviously for local authorities to support the boards and forums, but we are aware that resourcing can be a challenge for boards. That is why we are about to consult on the level of the occasional licence fee, which has been £10 for some time. I will let Peter Reid give a bit more detail, but if we decide to increase the fee, that could be an important source of revenue that may lead to better resourcing.

I wonder what local authority licensing staff think of the forums and whether they think that they are just a tick-box exercise. I suppose that that is a question for them.

In our discussion in May last year, concern was expressed that it was unclear whether the law supported the expansion of the overprovision powers, which were originally intended to focus on public order, to deal with public health issues. It has been drawn to our attention that doing that has proved fraught with legal difficulty. What is the Government’s view on whether it should be possible to use overprovision powers to deal with public health and whether the law is in a fit state to allow that to be done?

Two portfolios are involved here, as the issue comes under justice, but there is also a public health aspect. We recognise that we need to work between portfolios at times and cannot work in a silo. The Government has worked hard to reduce alcohol-related harms, for example with minimum unit pricing and action on multibuys. I have seen the report that AFS brought out last April, which drew a link between overprovision and crime and other types of harm. The Government is definitely looking at the issue that you raise.

Under the licensing regime, the boards have the power to determine that there is overprovision in their areas. They have to put out a statement about overprovision levels and, if they decide that there is overprovision, they can act on that. Obviously, the evidence has to be robust. There are many examples in which boards have used those powers successfully; Peter Reid can give a bit more detail.

We recognise that overprovision is an issue that is always going to be fraught and open to debate between differing opinions. It is difficult, and we are doing what we can to support boards to make a finding of overprovision if they want to. The guidance has been updated substantially, as has been mentioned, and there has been a lot of legal discussion to make the process more straightforward and easier for boards to use. We hope that the guidance will help boards, because the process is often the stumbling block when a board wants to do something.

We are mindful about concerns that have been raised about overprovision, in particular by Alcohol Focus Scotland. It made a number of good points, which were taken forward in the 2015 act. One point was to make it absolutely clear that a board could determine that the entire board area was the locality for the purposes of overprovision, which makes it a lot easier for a board to make use of public health evidence, which is generally available for a much larger area. It would be challenging to find public health evidence for Sauchiehall Street but a lot more straightforward to find it for South Lanarkshire. Using public health data and finding overprovision on public health grounds is a lot more straightforward, and we encourage boards to do so.

Are you saying that it is clear in law that public health criteria over a licensing board area can be used as a reason for restricting alcohol licences?

Yes, public health is part of the evidence that the board can consider.

Are you confident that the legal framework within which such decisions would be made is watertight?

I do not think that we could ever promise that the legal framework is watertight.

That is the problem that has been highlighted—it is not clear whether licensing boards can use the overprovision assessment aspect of the act to tackle public health questions.

Public health represents one of the five underlying objectives in the 2015 act; boards have used public health arguments in the past, and I expect them to continue to do so.

The purpose of updating the guidance is to provide as much clarity, help and support as possible to boards so that they are able to make those decisions.

What are your views on the concern that the need to establish a dependable causal link between harm and overprovision is a barrier to using overprovision assessment to address public health concerns?

When we were developing the guidance, there was considerable legal debate about what exactly terms such as “dependable causal link” and “rebuttable presumption” mean. We have tried to make them as clear as we can in the guidance, in order to help boards’ understanding of how it works. There was considerable discussion about that among lawyers. I am not a lawyer, but my take on it was that it is a matter of law that there must be some form of causal link. However, within the guidance, we have tried to make it clear how boards can evidence that causal link in preparing their overprovision assessment. The standard is on the balance of probabilities, so we do not feel that it is an insurmountable barrier to a board arriving at an overprovision assessment. It is a matter of the law.

There is no current plan to change the law in that area, but we would be interested in the committee’s views on that and we will take them into consideration. We will keep that matter under review.

However, if the evidence is that it is a complicated area of law that is under dispute, guidance—although it can help people and give them more confidence in reaching decisions—will not change the underlying tensions. The Government has a good track record of dealing with public health concerns around alcohol, but it is clear to me that licensing must be one of the tools that one uses to address those concerns. If it can be shown that it remains an area of legal dispute, will the Government move to change the law to make it beyond doubt that overprovision assessment can be used to tackle public health questions?

Overprovision assessment can be used to tackle public health concerns. You have latched on to one view that was expressed by one stakeholder, but I do not feel that that is a widely held view.

Many boards have successfully demonstrated that there is overprovision and they have successfully defended that in the courts. However, I hope that the updated guidance will give more clarity about that. We are keeping it under review; if we feel that it is an on-going problem, the Government will look at it.

To clarify the matter, you are saying that the boards have already found that they can use overprovision assessment, but some have used it better than others, which is why the courts have found in their favour, and you think that no change in the law is required at this stage.

Yes.

Online and out-of-town supermarket alcohol sales contribute to overconsumption, and I think that supermarket sales contribute to overprovision. How can the Scottish Government and licensing boards tackle those issues?

We are seeing a changing trend in how people buy and consume alcohol. As part of the 2018 alcohol framework, the Government is undertaking work to understand online sales. We are looking at that area, but I will let Peter Reid explain it from the licensing perspective.

Premises that sell alcohol will have a premises licence and will be considered by a board in the normal run of things. You alluded to the fact that there is a growing trend of the online sale of alcohol. As the minister said, research is being carried out on that, and we will consider the findings. It is not easy to determine what we might do, but we will be interested to hear views on the matter.

10:00  

There are areas where there are not many off-sales outlets but people can drive to a supermarket a couple of miles away, and those people could be more likely to buy online. In that case, we end up getting a distorted picture of where alcohol is being consumed. Is any research being done on that so that we can get a more accurate picture of alcohol consumption in Scotland?

Yes. That is covered in the research under the alcohol framework that is being done by public health colleagues.

Excellent.

I will move on to another area. Last year, it became a requirement for licensing boards to produce annual functions reports, which communities can use to scrutinise the boards’ work. Given that those reports vary considerably in their content and format, is the Government committed to producing guidance to aid the function and ensure best practice and perhaps standardisation?

Yes. The functions reports that we have seen have varied in length from four pages to 358 pages, so there is clearly quite a bit of diversity there. That will reflect the nature of different local areas; some will have many premises and some will not, and perhaps that plays into it. My officials received an analysis on the annual functions reports a few days ago from Alcohol Focus Scotland.

We do not want to unduly burden the licensing boards, so we need to make sure that what we ask them to do is useful and appropriate. We are looking into that and we expect that the guidance will address issues around it. We do not want the reports to be completely standardised. We want to ensure that people can write them in the way that they want. However, we want them to be useful and to add clarity to the issue.

I will let Peter Reid say a little more on that.

The functions report was one of the two additional reporting requirements that were brought in by the 2015 act. The other one was the income and expenditure report. On the latter, we met informally with boards and had a discussion about what might be useful for inclusion in the reports and what they might look like. I think that we got an example from a board that had done one and we shared that, and we also did a minute of the meeting and shared that with the boards for them to consider. In that way, we provided a bit of a steer for when they provided the income and expenditure reports.

When the functions report came in, we spoke to the board solicitors again, and the feedback that we got from them was that the fairly light-touch approach to the income and expenditure reports had worked well and they would welcome a similar approach for the annual functions report. For that reason, we did some light engagement with the local authorities’ boards and Alcohol Focus Scotland, which is alluded to in its report, and a minute of that was circulated to the boards to help to inform them.

The boards have now prepared their first functions reports and will be able to see what other boards have produced, and there is also the overarching analysis that AFS has done. That will help to inform improvements in the production of the reports. We hope that boards will see and pick up on good examples from elsewhere and reflect on what has worked well and what has not worked so well in their own reports.

I do not think that we will necessarily rush to do a review of the reports immediately. When we are a few reports down the line, we will be at a far more appropriate stage to look at them.

The written submission that we have received from Alcohol Focus Scotland, which I hope you have seen, mentions the draft guidance. It says.

“This document has no statutory authority and in AFS’s view is not fit for purpose. The poor drafting risks exacerbating the existing confusion and ambiguity that the update was intended to address, particularly in relation to the crucial section on overprovision.”

What is your response to that?

I will let Peter Reid answer that one.

I will take you back a bit to provide some context around the issue. The work on updating statutory guidance has been a substantial undertaking. We started it in 2017 and have been working with a wide range of stakeholders. The Institute of Licensing brought together a lot of stakeholders, including Alcohol Focus Scotland, to work on it.

In parallel, there was a revised requirement in relation to the licensing policy statements, which are the key strategic documents for licensing boards. In the past, they were prepared every three years, but AFS and others said that that did not work very well, and recommended that the licensing policy statements should be aligned with the duration of the licensing board that owned them. That is what we did in the 2015 act, which gave a new board 18 months to settle down and prepare a new licensing policy statement, which would mean that it would feel that it had ownership of it. That is reasonable, but the result of that was the creation of a November 2018 deadline for the licensing policy statements to be published, and we were not going to have the guidance finished by then.

When we spoke to licensing board clerks, they told us that they were worried that the guidance would completely contradict the work that they had been doing to develop the licensing policy statements. They were not sure whether they should be doing that work and were concerned that they might be undermined. Because of that, we prioritised work on the relevant chapters on overprovision so that we could get a workable draft, and that was shared informally with stakeholders, including licensing boards, to give them the reassurance that they should carry on doing the important work that they were doing on the licensing policy statements that were due for publication in November 2018. I got the impression that they were reassured by that, and they carried on and published those documents at the right time. It would have been unfortunate to lose the publication of those 2018 licensing policy statements for the sake of a requirement to ensure that the guidance was published properly first. The boards were reassured by what they saw and were able to produce their licensing policy statements. It was not an ideal situation, but we were dealing with change, and I think that we came up with the best compromise that we could.

I am not sure whether you are agreeing or disagreeing with Alcohol Focus Scotland. It describes the guidance as “not fit for purpose”. That is quite strong.

Alcohol Focus Scotland has a particular set of views and it is robust in expressing them.

We have talked this morning about the process and the guidance that has been put in place, and about overprovision. However, local residents sometimes find it difficult to understand how they can become involved in the process. There is a lack of understanding of how they can participate and what they can do. Sometimes, they live in an environment that has a detrimental effect on them and they see what is happening around them, but they find that expressing their views can be something of a minefield. Can more be done in the current system to allow local residents to express their views in a more pronounced way?

There is always more that can be done, but I think that, in this case, there are already lots of opportunities for local residents to express their views. The licensing regime has that baked into it. The boards can carry out engagement around their licensing policy statements, and residents can feed into their local licensing forum, attend meetings of the boards and speak to their councillors who sit on the boards. I take your point that, sometimes, people might not be aware of what they can do, but that facility is there, and people can take advantage of it.

You have touched on the role of councillors and the community council, and you talked about attending a community council yourself. Councillors and members of the community council are seen as representatives to whom people can express their opinions. However, there still seem to be some barriers to achieving that. If you have been to a licensing meeting, you will know that it has something of the flavour of a court environment. Individuals do not see how they can participate in that process. Of course, the applicant may well have representation and there may well be some discussion on the part of the forum or interested parties about how that can take place, but do you think that there is a bigger role for councillors and community councils in ensuring that people have an opportunity to express their views and opinions?

Community councils are statutory consultees for a premises licence and we would always encourage them to put forward their views. Anybody who is worried about premises near them can request a review. There are lots of mechanisms and ways in which people can engage. Peter Reid may have more detail on that.

The licensing standards officer is a role under statute, which includes providing support and advice and mediating. The MESAS programme that was mentioned earlier reported very favourably on the licensing standards officers and the positive impact that they have. I am out and about a lot and I seldom hear a bad word about them; I hear nothing but praise for their efforts.

They have a vital role to play in ensuring that information is processed back and forward between the council, the licensing forum and individuals, so that there is participation and the community feels involved. However, previous witnesses have talked about the lack of understanding of the licensing system and the barriers to participation. What can the Scottish Government do to increase the understanding? There are still barriers in the process, so more has to be done to ensure that that happens.

We do not want people to face barriers to participating; we want to encourage community engagement, which is why we have the local forums and so on. That is all designed to ensure that we receive a diversity of views that can be fed into the board. I know that we keep talking about the guidance, but I ask Peter Reid to confirm whether this is another issue that is covered in that.

The guidance is primarily a document for the licensing boards.

Okay, so it is more technical.

However, I heard a suggestion the other day that there might be value in advice for people who want to make objections. We would not have any problem with preparing some advice on that. Advice that is guidance for boards is written in a certain style and will not be as accessible. Somebody who may be concerned about premises opening next door to them and the potential nuisance will want to know what sort of points to get across if they want to make an objection. The Government could prepare something and publish it on the website as an adjunct to the guidance.

That would certainly help because, as I say, some people see it as a bit of a minefield. The guidance is remote and legal, and they do not feel that they have the necessary qualifications or understanding. Giving people some kind of template outlining the areas that might be covered would give them more confidence in the system, which is what we want.

I take that point. We will be happy to look into it and see whether we can publish something that would be helpful.

It would be fair to say that most people are not lying in their beds at night worrying about the local licensing policy. However, I agree entirely with your view of what licensing standards officers do when people have an issue: my experience has always been that they do a good job. People want to know that officers will respond when there are issues. Has the Government looked at the resources that are available in licensing boards? We can talk around the issue all day, but we will get nowhere if local authorities do not have the capacity to respond to public concerns. Is the Government looking at that, or would it be prepared to do so, so that the committee can have a look at the results?

We are looking at the matter. Peter Reid will give you the detail.

Resources for licensing boards are a perennial concern. A while ago, we looked at fee levels in licensing, but we faced a stumbling block in that it was difficult to get enough information to form views on whether fees were appropriate. That is why, in the 2015 act, we set up the requirement to have an income and expenditure report, which meant that we would get information from boards throughout Scotland on their levels of income and expenditure. As has already been mentioned, we intend to consider whether the occasional fee is set at an appropriate level. Further to that, we intend to look at the boards’ overall levels of fees and expenditure and consider whether that should inform a change to the current fees structure.

10:15  

We would need to balance the interests of people who might apply for a licence with the need to ensure that boards have the appropriate resources to carry out their function properly, by ensuring that the fee is not punitive and does not have a distorting effect.

You talked about LSOs and how well respected their jobs are. We hear evidence that the role is under some pressure. What is the Scottish Government doing to help local authorities to recognise the value of the role and to provide adequate staff resource?

The Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005 requires a local authority to appoint at least one LSO for its area. The data that the Scottish Government has shows that the number of LSOs fell from 63.6 in 2011-12 to just over 59 in 2017-18. We are hearing the same concerns—LSOs are being expected to cover additional duties, including the recently created civic licensing standards officer role, for example. We will keep that under review. If we get more data, we would be happy to share it with the committee.

That would be very helpful. For understandable reasons, the licensing boards sit outwith the councils’ community planning and strategic planning frameworks. That helps them to remain independent, but it makes it difficult to connect alcohol licensing to other community initiatives. Is there any benefit in requiring the licensing boards to be more connected to community planning work?

There is nothing to stop boards going beyond the current minimum requirements when they undertake engagement. When they are developing the licensing policy statement there is a really good opportunity for boards to engage as widely as possible. Many boards do that.

I can see that the committee has a strong interest in the issue. If the committee has recommendations and suggestions for making progress on that, I would be happy to consider them.

The community planning partnership is supposed to be the hub where everyone gets together. It is important that something that is as significant as licensing feeds into those partnerships. The committee can consider that later.

As there are no other questions, I thank the minister and Mr Reid for attending the committee.

10:17 Meeting suspended.  

10:31 On resuming—