Industry Training

Licensees Training

When the Licensing Act came in, the whole issue regarding licensees’ training was ducked, and at the time two things struck me as being ridiculous.

The first was that there was no distinction between the types of training that were required for licensees: the same training was supposed to cover both, say, running an off-licence and managing a large nightclub. Worse still, you could acquire your personal licence whilst you were at college and then some years later start work as a licensee with no further training.
Less of a catch-all system is needed. Why not have a short course in respect of off-sales and a longer course for those wishing to operate premises where the sales generally take place indoors? There is even an argument for having an advanced course for the more complex and challenging types of licensed premises, such as nightclubs.

This will no doubt be an unpopular viewpoint, but I believe it totally wrong that those who qualified as licensees under the old system should simply be able to transfer over without taking any course at all. How can this be sufficient, given that the two systems are very different, the law isn’t the same, and a large number of licensees on the old system didn’t have to take any qualifications at all? At the very least there is a huge disparity in knowledge between different holders of personal licences.

Would those courses have put a huge burden on licensees? I don’t believe so. Examine training now required for the average professional in business, and you will find that the individual concerned passes the initial qualification but then requires refresher training. As a lawyer, for example, I need to do at least 12 hours a year and younger people are required to do more. The scale of the law relating to licensed premises is greatly underestimated; it is so complex, in fact, that some sort of continuous training should be mandatory.

Interestingly, this view is shared in some areas by police licensing officers, some of whom have persuaded licensees to attend training courses themselves. They have also requested that bar staff attend a shortened training course.

Once they get over the hurdle of attending a course, people genuinely want, enjoy, and benefit from training.

Jeremy Allen
Poppleston Allen