The Head of Regulatory Services and Community Safety has submitted a report to seek agreement of the licence fees for 2022/23 where the Council has discretion over the level of fee charged.

Recommendation: That the Licensing & Gambling Acts Committee resolves to:

1.    Agree the licence fees and charges for 2022/23 as set out in Appendix 1 and recommend them to Council.

The Head of Regulatory Services and Community Safety had submitted a report to seek agreement of the licence fees for 2022/23 where the Council had discretion over the level of fee charged.

The Senior Licensing Compliance Officer introduced the report. It was proposed that no substantial variation to the current fees and charges was made in 2022/23 in order to provide financial stability to licence holders in the present economic climate.

In response to questions, the Senior Licensing Compliance Officer confirmed:

·       That the additional fee for capacity of over 5,000 people detailed in Appendix 1 was determined by statute, as was the case for all Licensing Act fees.

·       That when taking factors such as inflation and wage rises into account, as far as she was aware the Council was not experiencing any financial losses as a result of freezing the licence fees, but that the Licensing Team Leader would be best-placed to advise on the matter. She added that Licensing was not a revenue-making department.

·       That the Night-time Levy was subject to the policy discussion rather than the fees and charges discussion and it was not something the Council was currently looking to explore, as there was resistance from the night-time economy when this issue was considered a few years previously and the sector had been faced with economic challenges since then which were still ongoing.

·       That any future implementation of a Night-time Levy would be subject to consultation and brought to the Committee for consideration as part of the Policy.

·       That the process through which Thames Valley Police (TVP) would inform the Council that it was interested in applying the Night-time Levy would be in the same way as the Special Saturation Zones in the East Oxford City Centre areas. TVP would be required to provide statistics that demonstrated the need for extra resource in order to Police the city centre.

The Committee resolved to:

·       Agree the licence fees and charges for 2022/23 as set out in Appendix 1 and recommend them to Council.