Agenda and minutes

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Items
No. Item

27.

Declarations of Interest

Members are asked to declare any disclosable pecuniary or affected interests in respect of any matter to be considered at this meeting.

 

Any Member with a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest in a matter should withdraw from the meeting when the matter is under consideration and should notify the Democratic Services Officer in attendance that they are withdrawing as they have such an interest. If the Disclosable Pecuniary Interest is not entered on the register of Members interests the Monitoring Officer must be notified of the interest within 28 days.

 

Any Member with an affected Interest in a matter must disclose the interest to the meeting.  There is no requirement to withdraw from the meeting when the interest is only an affected interest, but the Monitoring Officer should be notified of the interest, if not previously notified of it, within 28 days of the meeting.

 

Minutes:

There were no declarations of interest.

28.

The Procedure for Hearings at Licensing Panels pdf icon PDF 141 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

The procedure for hearings at Licensing Panels was noted by all.

 

29.

Application for review of premises licence for Sandhurst Tandoori, 80 High Street, Sandhurst, GU47 8ED pdf icon PDF 229 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

 

The Panel carefully considered all the information presented, both written and oral, from the following people:

 

  • the Licensing Officer who outlined the issues;
  • the Applicant,
  • the Licence Holder

 

together with reference to the appropriate Licensing objectives, the Council’s own Licensing Policy and the Secretary of State’s guidance and in particular the guidance issued following the amendments to the Immigration Act 2016, when the Home Office were granted new powers to seek a review of a premises licence in their own right as a Responsible Authority for breaches of the restrictions on employing people subject to immigration control in licensed premises.

 

At the conclusion of the proceedings all participants present confirmed that they had been given the opportunity to say all they wished to say. The Panel bore in mind the promotion of the four licensing objectives, the relevant objectives in this case being the prevention of Crime and Disorder.

 

After careful deliberation, the Panel decided that they would remove Mr Miah’s as the designated premises supervisor for the Sandhurst Tandoori and also revoke the premises license for Sandhurst Tandoori, High Street, Sandhurst GU47 8ED.

 

Reasons

 

To explain the Panel’s full reasons it was helpful to set out the central issues in the case. The Home Office sought a review of the licence and a revocation of Mr Miah’s DPS status because between November 2013 and November 2017 the Home Office Enforcement Team undertook three separate Immigration visits. On each occasion they found a number of people subject to immigration control who were forbidden to work at the licensed premises in return for wages, support, board or lodgings, which is contrary to the Immigration legislation. On each occasion a fixed penalty notice was issued to the premises and those notices contain total fines outstanding in the sum of £45,000. Mr Miah’s argument was that whilst he were the licence holder and the DPS at the premises since 2009 and even though his signature was on all the licence application documentation since 2009, he were only an employed manager and that the owner made all the decisions about who was hired and fired at the business.

 

The Panel considered all submissions very carefully and they concluded that whilst Mr Miah may not have been responsible for the hiring and firing prior to becoming the owner in January 2018, he would have been aware of the first Immigration visit in 2013. As a responsible DPS it would have been his place to insist that if his name continued to be on the licence, he would discharge the DPS role and general management at the premises. At this point he should have obtained an agreement with the owner that they provide him with evidence that staff had the right paper work to be employed at the premises. The panel gave him the benefit of the doubt in respect of the November 2013 enforcement visit.

 

The second enforcement visit took place in September 2017. By that time the Immigration legislation had been amended by the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 29.

 

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