Agenda and minutes

Members and officers must declare any disclosable pecuniary interests in relation to any business on the agenda.  Declarations should also be made at any stage such an interest becomes apparent during the meeting.

If in doubt contact the Legal or Democratic Services representative for this meeting.

Councillor Carol O’Neal substituted for Councillor Catherine Arnold

There were no declarations of interest.

To receive any questions from Members of the public in accordance with Standing Order 11.2

(Note: Public Question Time will operate for a maximum of 30 minutes.)

There were no questions from the public.

Pre-submitted Members questions are pursuant to rule 12 of the Council &

Committee Procedure Rules.

Questions should be submitted by midday on Wednesday 6 September 2023 to

Democratic Services, democratic.services@adur-worthing.gov.uk

(Note: Member Question Time will operate for a maximum of 30 minutes.)

There were no questions from Members.

To approve the minutes of the Planning Committee meetings of the Licensing Committee held on 16 January 2023 and the Licensing Sub Committees on 8 March 2022, 5 October 2022, 25 April 2023 and 22 May 2023 which have been emailed to Members.

Resolved: that the minutes of the committee meeting of the Licensing Committee held on 16 January 2023 and the Licensing Sub Committees on 8 March 2022, 5 October 2022, 25 April 2023 and 22 May 2023 be approved as the correct record.

To consider any items the Chairman of the meeting considers to be urgent

There were no urgent items.

A report by the Director for Sustainability & Resources, attached as item 6.

Before the Committee was a report by the Director for Sustainability & Resources, a copy of which had been circulated to all members.

Members thanked Officers for the hard work they had undertaken on the review and had questions for the presenting Officer regarding wording and minor errors of some parts of the policy.

In response to a member's question regarding how robust the Officer considered the current policy to be, the Officer confirmed that the Adur Policy, although untested recently, was very similar to the Worthing Policy which had stood up well legally and hadn’t been subject to any challenges in court that he was aware of.

Members also asked the Officer about the ‘safe spaces’ mentioned in the report on page 39. The Officer clarified that Sussex Police have developed an app that will show the user where their nearest safe space is. He agreed that he would have details of this added to the Council website.

Members explored the way Licence holders could be made to feel able to report issues without fear of losing their licences. The Officer explained that Sussex Police were always keen to work with Licence holders rather than against them. In Worthing, the organisation PubWatch assisted greatly in this relationship and the Council’s Licensing Department was keen to have a similar organisation set up in Adur. 

Although Sussex Police’s comments regarding licenced premises applying for later and later opening hours wasn’t deemed relevant in Adur, the Officer confirmed for Members that shoplifting, and the difficulty that traders and police have dealing with it, was more of an issue in this area .Whilst some premises seemed to deal harshly with perpetrators of theft from shops, other premises, due to fears of physical abuse, did not encourage their staff to address shoplifters. The Officer explained that this latter approach could be considered to be undermining the licensing objectives and suggested that Officers may advocate employing security staff in such premises.

A proposal was put forward to approve the draft policy, this was seconded and voted on with a unanimously in favour outcome.

Resolved: The Committee agreed with the Officers recommendations, considered the enclosed draft Statement of Licensing Policy and the representations received and unanimously agreed to recommend a final draft to full Council for adoption.