Legal advice: LACORS and local authorities

LACORS is helping local authorities to make sense of the reforms.

By Piers Warne of thePublican.com's team of legal experts at London solicitors Joelson Wilson.​

LACORS, the local authorities co-ordinating body, has finally grasped the nettle and has taken a pragmatic stance on advising local authorities in relation to certain aspects of transition matters. While the process is still not perfect and, let's face it, nothing can exonerate the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) for the almighty mess that is the forms and their guidance on completing them, there is hope that applications will be processed and not just returned. Here, in a nutshell, is the reason for the cautious optimism.

Conversion​

LACORS has advised local authorities that reference to licence conditions in Part A of the form should be accepted for the purposes of processing the application, rather than having to attempt to fit all conditions on licences into the little boxes on the form.

Variation​

LACORS advises that if you are applying for a variation at the same time as conversion, you only have to note any additional steps you propose taking for the substance of the varied or additional licensing activities you propose to carry out. It says that you are within your rights (if you feel that on a risk assessment there is nothing more to do) to state "I already have all the controls in place to promote the licensing objectives and therefore will not offer any other conditions as part of the operating schedule".

LACORS goes slightly further and says that if you provide no further information on the form, then it would be unwise for a licensing authority to reject the application, as it is for the responsible authorities (which the licensing authority is not, much as it would like to be) to make representations if they feel you are not upholding the licensing objectives.

However, all this comes with a giant caveat. LACORS can only offer guidance and it is for licensing authorities to take on board what it says, or not. If a particular licensing authority decides to ignore good advice then you may find your application winging its way back to you to be amended!