Beda Comment January 2008

Beda May

BEDA COMMENT

The last twelve months

Operational, BEda comment, January 2008, COMMENTS

I hope you all had a prosperous festive period. This new year unfortunately brings with it fresh challenges for the late night sector as the government introduces Alcohol Disorder Zones. BEDA fought this ridiculous piece of legislation very hard from the moment it was first mooted. Clearly a ‘disorder zone’ is only going to be attractive to precisely the kind of customers that operators don’t want to attract, so how instituting one could help improve the character of a locality is highly questionable. There are many pieces of legislation where there are differing views expressed by the police and the licensed trade, not so with ADZs. I have been hard pressed to find anyone right across the board who thinks they are a good idea.

A long time ago, BEDA made strong representations that if a venue is Best Bar None accredited (or accredited with another like-minded scheme) then the venue should be exempt from the charges. This looks as if it will be the case. We also argued that it should be a last resort intervention. Again this has been mooted in the guidance.

We did argue strongly that certain styles of operation shouldn’t be unfairly treated, yet the government still seems intent on charging late opening, large capacity venues – i.e. clubs more than off licences and pubs which close before the charging period. We continue to argue vociferously that any premise, whatever the size, which responsibly mediates both the sale and the consumption of alcohol should be treated more favourably that those which only mediate the sale. How the government wishes to make improvements in certain localities by not charging those off trade businesses which potentially add to the problem is truly baffling. This fight is far from over and we continue to raise our objections at the highest level.

2008 will see a great deal of activity - around issues such as price, promotions and advertising and how they impact on health - played out. Another government study will report on industry standards to ascertain how far good practice initiatives have permeated the licensed trade. BEDA will continue to fight any knee-jerk policy initiatives which flow from these major reports and work with our other trade colleagues on those wider issues such as: ‘alcohol - the new tobacco’. The Nuffield Council Report on Bioethics which was published recently showed that the health lobby are only too keen to link alcohol and tobacco – since it helps demonise the former with little effort.

Clearly the health lobby are much more organised than they have ever been and these will be extremely testing times for the licensed trade as a whole. One of the key aims of the wider trade (as a unified voice) over the coming months and years is to ensure that any legislative interventions are appropriate and proportionate to the issues. BEDA is doing a great deal to turn around the government’s own figures to tell a different story. We continue to argue that the vast majority of people drink sensibly and that reality, rather than hysterical media coverage, should be shaping policy.

Issues around the frontloading of cheap supermarket alcohol will continue to be problematic for the late night sector in 2008 - as they proved to be in 2007. CGA’s alarming annual Galaxy Radio 2007 survey results reported 22% of all those going for a night out were drinking three drinks or more before they even left home - a 100% increase on two years earlier.

The extremely low cost of off trade alcohol is clearly proving too tempting for certain customers and that is having a negative knock-on effect for late night operators who, quite rightly, have to turn people away at the door for being too drunk. On this subject we have worked very hard over the last 12 months to get the issue of off trade below-cost selling on the government’s agenda and have done a great deal to move politicians and officials in this direction. The major worry looking forward is that the government can’t or won’t resolve the pricing issue, so will try and use the blunt instrument of tax.

For our part, BEDA will continue to fight hard against these and other difficult issues to help deliver the best trading conditions we possibly can in 2008 and beyond.

Words: Paul Smith (Executive Director of BEDA)

From: January 2008 Issue

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