Commenting on the Mayor of London’s new strategic licensing powers set to come into effect on 3 November, Mayor Jason Perry, London Councils’ Executive Member for Planning, Infrastructure and Regeneration, said:
“London boroughs are pro-growth and have invested significantly in supporting local nightlife, improving safety, and revitalising town centres.
“We are concerned the new strategic licensing powers use a definition of ‘strategic importance’ that is too broad. In fact, it is not strategic nor targeted.
“Boroughs also want to see transparency from the Mayor and GLA about the process for selecting applications to call in using this wide-ranging definition. This is crucial if we are to provide certainty for local residents and businesses.
“The introduction of the new powers will bring additional burdens to boroughs at a time when resources are already stretched. We look forward to working with the government and the GLA to calculate new burdens funding to make sure boroughs’ costs are covered.
“Boroughs also want to work alongside the government and GLA on evaluating and reviewing this pilot within its first two years of operation.”
London Councils highlights the new administrative duties, operational requirements, and resource burdens on local authorities in the capital as a result of the strategic licensing powers.
These include:
- Mandatory data sharing. Boroughs must provide information on licensing applications within set timeframes for the GLA to assess for potential strategic importance.
- Duty to publicise if an application is of potential strategic importance. Once the borough has been informed an application is of potential strategic importance, it has to advertise this on its website.
- Risk of call-ins and overturns. Boroughs’ local licensing decisions may now be ‘called in’ by the Mayor and overturned.
