Doncaster Metripolitan Council Licensing Committee Meeting

No declarations of interest were made at the meeting.

RESOLVED that the minutes of the Licensing Committee meeting held on 16th June 2022, be approved as a correct record, and signed by the Chair.

The Committee considered a report, introduced by David Smith, Licensing Officer, which provided an overview of the outcome of a public consultation exercise undertaken in September 2022 to review the three existing Cumulative Impact Areas (CIAs) in Doncaster, as detailed at Appendix B to the report.  

It was noted that the Council was required by statue to carry out an assessment of any Cumulative Impact of licenced premises in its area every 3 years to ensure that they remained relevant and properly reflected the area to which they applied, and evidence the Council’s decision by publishing a Cumulative Impact Assessment. 

The Licensing Officer confirmed that a public consultation regarding the Cumulative Impact Areas had taken place in September 2022. The report outlined the consultation process, the list of consultees, including statutory consultees, licensing holders and resident’s representatives, and a breakdown of the responses received in relation to the questions posed in the questionnaire.  The Committee was asked to consider whether the evidence received following the consultation supports that the existing Cumulative Impact areas should remain, be amended or removed.

30 responses had been received during the 8-week consultation process.  The majority (70%) of respondents had indicated that the Cumulative Impact Areas should remain unchanged.  Details of the questions and responses to each of the questions posed were set out at Appendix B of the report.

Public Health and South Yorkshire Police, responsible authorities had responded to the consultation, and both had indicated that they were supportive of retaining the current CIAs. 

Public Health had submitted a statement and supporting evidence, which provided details of the impact of alcohol in Doncaster and data related to Doncaster alcohol related hospital admissions.  Public Health had recommended that the Cumulative Impact Policy area to be extended to cover additional areas of the city relating to the 10 Lower Super Output Areas (LSOA) with the most alcohol specific admissions falling within the Doncaster central locality between April 2017 and 2022, as detailed at Appendix C of the report.

Evidence submitted by South Yorkshire Police recommended that the current Cumulative Impact areas should remain unchanged, details of which were set out at Appendix D of the report.

It was noted that representatives from Public Health and South Yorkshire Police had been invited to attend the meeting however they were not in attendance.

During subsequent discussion, the Licensing Officer responded to a number of questions from Members seeking clarity on aspects of the report.

In reviewing the findings from the data analysis and the consultation process, Members expressed disappointment that the statistical information submitted by both Public Health and South Yorkshire Police relating to crime and alcohol related hospital admissions did not provide up to date information and there were gaps in the data provided by Public Health.  It was also noted that South Yorkshire Police had undertaken an analysis of the existing CIAs and not areas outside of the central locality.  Therefore, the Committee were unable to make an assessment of the current CIAs and the extension proposed by Public Health as there was no comparative data to measure against.

Whilst the Licensing department had provided current data for the period February 2023 regarding the number of licensed premises by street for the 3 existing central Cumulative Impact Areas, including Public Health’s proposal to extend the CIA, as outlined at Appendix E of the report, no data had been provided for 2020/21 and 2021/2022 for comparative purposes.  The Committee was unable to determine from the evidence presented whether there had been an increase, or a reduction in the number of licensed premises in the CIAs to that of previous years.  Therefore, Members were unable to measure whether the issuing licences in a particular area had seen a greater impact in terms of the figures provided by Public Health and South Yorkshire Police.  Members also felt that it would also be useful for future reports to include information regarding whether any licences had been refused within the central zone of the CIA, which would enable the Committee to determine whether the Cumulative Impact Policy was beneficial to those areas and whether the town centre was being effectively managed and was business friendly. 

Members also wished to understand the reasons why a CIA had been established in areas where there was no licenced premises in that locality.  The Committee also requested that in future the report provide information in relation to the impact of off licences in the CIA.

In commenting on the format of the data presented in the Appendices of the report, the Committee expressed difficulty in being able to comprehend the data, due to some of the data sets not being provided, therefore they were unable to make a comparison. Members also in referring to the extracts of Public Health data in relation to the illustrated graphs at Appendix C highlighted the difficulty in reading the information due to the small size of the graphics.  The Committee therefore, requested that future reports be presented in a clearer format and include a detailed breakdown of comparative data so that Members can compare previous years statistics against current statistics.

In light of above, the Committee felt that the evidence provided by Public Health and South Yorkshire Police was not sufficiently clear for them to make a determination regarding the continued existence of the CIAs and the extension of the CIA as proposed by Public Health. It was therefore, proposed that the report be deferred to a future meeting, in order that representatives from Public Health and South Yorkshire Police attend the meeting to respond to Members’ questions in relation to the information presented.

The Chair requested that in future he be briefed on the report prior to the meeting.

To conclude, the Chair thanked Members and Officers for their attendance at the meeting.

RESOLVED that the report on the outcome of the consultation regarding the Cumulative Impact Areas be deferred for consideration at a future meeting, in order that representatives from Public Health and South Yorkshire Police to attend the meeting to respond to Members’ questions in relation to the evidence presented.