The Scottish Beer and Pub Association, which represents 1500 of Scotland’s 5200 pubs, as well as the country’s major brewers and drinks companies, has said that information secured from just five licensing boards shows a net of £1.25m, with the organisation’s chief executive estimating the national figure is around three times that.
The claims come as it emerges that more pubs, hotels and restaurants in the north of Scotland are being forced to shut or resort to a “bring your own bottle” policy after new licensing laws were introduced on Tuesday.
Around 10 premises in the Highlands, and several across the north-east, failed to submit their applications on time and have been banned from selling alcohol, while restaurants that had chosen not to renew their licences are instead opting to introduce a “bring your own bottle” policy.
Among the effected venues is The Duke of Gordon Hotel at Kingussie, where staff have claimed a “whole series of errors” from licensing clerks led to them not renewing the licence in time.The hotel is offering guests complimentary drinks until it gets the licence.
The row over the surpluses will ensure that the schism between the trade and licensing authorities will widen, with boards accused in large part of the administrative chaos engulfing the first week of the new laws.
When hiked by the government in late 2007, a seven to nine-fold increase in the basic annual tariff for the right of a pub, club or off-sales to sell alcohol up to 30 times the previous levels for major hotels, large nightclubs and supermarkets, the justification was that the public purse was being relieved of the burden of subsidising the licensing system.
With councils already bailing out licensing boards by more than one-third of their running costs, it was also intended to meet the costs of the legislative shake-up across the following 18 months.
But, according to figures secured through freedom of information legislation by Patrick Browne, chief executive of the SBPA Glasgow has a surplus of £500,000-plus, Edinburgh £233,000, Dundee £200,000, Aberdeen £152,000, and Perth and Kinross £120,000.
Mr Browne claims that information received from several authorities has stated that this money will go into the wider council budget rather than used exclusively to reduce fees.
He said: “Councils are profiteering from the trade’s fees. The view of the Scottish Government has been that any surplus would be used to reduce subsequent fees but in many areas its disappearing into council coffers.
“One claim was that it will be used for an estimated 1200 legal challenges during the transition but to date there have been 12.
“This is potentially £3m to £4m being lost to the industry. Fees may come down a bit but they’re still at a much higher level than before. The justification for these higher fees was that the trade should pay for the licensing administration and not other council functions for which it was never intended.”
A spokesman for Glasgow Licensing Board said: “The move to the new legislation has come with significant additional costs.
“A long-term view was taken that once the act came into effect both expenditure and income could reduce over time. Glasgow set its fees in accordance with the legislation but a commitment was also given to review fees following the introduction of the act and that commitment will be met.”
Meanwhile, it has emerged that a major academic assessment of the impact of alcohol on communities and their health statistics will be commissioned in Glasgow to help frame how it will go about promoting and protecting health within the new legislation.
Preliminary work will begin next month, with the report publicly available from next June.
Glasgow has taken similar approaches on issues ranging from secondary school lunches to the Commonwealth Games on “legacy planning”.
