Government Coalition Announces Pub Measures
20 May 2010
By Emily Ryans
This morning the Government published their full programme for Government over the next five years. The programme encompasses many of the manifesto commitments of both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, particularly on issues where the two parties agreed.
Among the commitments made by the Coalition Government were to:
- Find a practical way to make small business rate relief automatic
- Cut red tape to encourage the performance of more live music
- Enable councils to take competition issues into account when drawing up their local plans to shape the direction and type of new retail development
- Reform the planning system to give neighbourhoods far more ability to determine the shape of the places in which their inhabitants live, based on the principles set out in the Conservative Party publication Open Source Planning
- Introduce new powers to help communities save local facilities and services threatened with closure, and give communities the right to bid to take over local state-run services
- Implement the Sustainable Communities Act, so that citizens know how taxpayers' money is spent in their area and have a greater say over how it is spent.
Responsibility for licensing issues has been transferred back to the Home Office, and commitments included:
- To ban the sale of alcohol below cost price
- To review alcohol taxation and pricing to ensure it tackles binge drinking without unfairly penalising responsible drinkers, pubs and important local industries
- To overhaul the Licensing Act to give local authorities and the police much stronger powers to remove licences from, or refuse to grant licences to, any premises that are causing problems
- To allow councils and the police to shut down permanently any shop or bar found to be persistently selling alcohol to children
- To double the maximum fine for under-age alcohol sales to £20,000
- To permit local councils to charge more for late-night licences to pay for additional policing.
CAMRA will continue to campaign on policies which featured in the parties' manifestos but not in the coalition agreement, including reform of the beer tie, a ban on restrictive covenants and community consultation before pubs can be demolished or their use changed.