Public Health Licensing Approach in London

Safe Sociable London PartnershipDr Ghazaleh Pashmi

24th March 2014

Safe Sociable London PartnershipCare about others, care about yourself, care about your drinking

Why Licensing?

• Managing availability is one of the most effective ways to reduce harm.

• New arrangements have brought Public Health into the sphere.

• There is a lot of scope to improve the effectiveness of licensing through data and partnerships.

• Its all about prevention.

Safe Sociable London PartnershipCare about others, care about yourself, care about your drinking

So What have we done about it?• Firstly, we established a London Licensing

Network to bring together all the people involved in licensing in London to tell us what they wanted.

One of the key things we were told was that there was a significant need for data - so we developed a data pack in

conjunction with key partners.

Safe Sociable London PartnershipCare about others, care about yourself, care about your drinking

Licensing Information Pack 2013• Produced by the Safe Sociable London

Partnership

• Designed to help local teams gain a more

accurate picture of the impacts of alcohol in

their local area

• Includes a series of innovative case studies

that highlight how local teams are already

working together

• Includes links to data sources to ensure that

teams have all the necessary information

they require when making licensing

decisions

Safe Sociable London PartnershipCare about others, care about yourself, care about your drinking

• Secondly we talked to Director’s of Public Health about what they wanted.

They wanted an easy process to be able to respond consistently and effectively to licensing applications, without taking up too

much time and resource

Safe Sociable London PartnershipCare about others, care about yourself, care about your drinking

Step 1: Identifying Criteria• A set of criteria was developed based upon local licensing and public

health priorities to identify where applications are clearly ‘green’ or ‘red’.

• This was based on both the application and local priorities

• The role of RAs including public health is to comment on applications and make representations to the licensing authority if they think the application threatens of the statutory licensing objectives

• The licensing objectives under the 2003 Licensing Act are:• the prevention of crime and disorder• public safety• the prevention of public nuisance• the protection of children from harm.

Safe Sociable London PartnershipCare about others, care about yourself, care about your drinking

Safe Sociable London PartnershipCare about others, care about yourself, care about your drinking

Safe Sociable London PartnershipCare about others, care about yourself, care about your drinking

Step 2: Scanning ToolWorking with Greater London Authority we developed a

scanning tool that allows local partners in public health to identify what types of data they have and what the data says about the local environment in which the licensed premise sits

To provide a snap shot of the data/area – Bulls eye chart– Dashboard

From this public health teams can drill down into the data and see what evidence is available to make a response

Safe Sociable London PartnershipCare about others, care about yourself, care about your drinking

Step 3: DataProviding access to data through:

– Data Pack– GLA’s Safe Stats website

Safe Sociable London PartnershipCare about others, care about yourself, care about your drinking

Safe Sociable London PartnershipCare about others, care about yourself, care about your drinking

Step 4: Decision MatrixWe developed a decision matrix to help DsPH

to decide if they want to make a response and options for what the response could be.

Things to consider:– Enough data/Evidence– Who else is making a rep– Discussion with applicant– Conditions/Objections

Safe Sociable London PartnershipCare about others, care about yourself, care about your drinking

This tool is useful but…..• Need to have an understanding of Licensing• Linking to the objectives• Need to be confident to present the information

and your representation• Need to know your local Statement of Licensing

Policy• Guidance from Licensing and Police colleagues• Talk to your population• weigh up the options

Safe Sociable London PartnershipCare about others, care about yourself, care about your drinking

ConsultationThis tool was developed through consultation

with partners including licensing officers, police and public health

This tool will bring consistency, certainty and a way to access and use evidence that will make public health’s role easier to engage with

Safe Sociable London PartnershipCare about others, care about yourself, care about your drinking

Safe Sociable London PartnershipCare about others, care about yourself, care about your drinking

We received 21 applications:• 9 On and Off licenses• 5 On licenses• 7 Off licenses

There were:• 8 variations• 11 new applications• 2 license reviews

After putting each application through the Licensing Tool, we decided to make 5 representations

Lambeth 2 month pilot:

Safe Sociable London PartnershipCare about others, care about yourself, care about your drinking

Summary of pilot process

• The licensing sub-committee welcomed the first representation fromPublic Health

• The support we received from the licensing team, trading standards andpolice was invaluable in making decisions and writing representations • We believe this process of engagement also supported these teams to understand the role of Public Health in licensing a little better

Training for Public Health

• In association with Barristers from Francis Taylor Building, we ran half day training courses to improve understanding of licensing policy and practice

Safe Sociable London PartnershipCare about others, care about yourself, care about your drinking

Thank you to: Maria Smolar

Stephen Forgan

Safe Sociable London PartnershipCare about others, care about yourself, care about your drinking