Agenda and minutes

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.

There were no declarations of interest.

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

The Panel agreed to grant the Variation of Premises License and terms by a majority decision.

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

•           the Licensing Officer who outlined the issues;

•           the Applicant,

•           the Interested Parties,

•           the Environmental Health Officer

together with reference to the appropriate Licensing objectives, the Council’s own Licensing Policy and the Secretary of State’s guidance. 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 noted that there had been no representations made by the Police, or any of the other Responsible Authorities. The panel did receive oral clarification from the Environmental Health Officer on decibel impact and how and why certain events were permitted to be at different decibel limits.  The Panel bore in mind the promotion of the four licensing objectives, the relevant objectives in this case being Public Safety and the Prevention of Public Nuisance.

In reaching their decision the Panel took note of the fact that mitigation had been offered to the objectors of the application. Environmental Health had met with Royal Berkshire Polo Club representatives and the twenty additional conditions, detailed with in the agenda papers, had been put forward to mitigate their concerns. At the hearing the applicants volunteered three additional conditions which were a 50 metre exclusion of the land from licensed activities in an L shape near the residential properties of the objectors and that the site plan with the excluded area attached to the licence will be agreed with the Licensing Officer prior to the licence being granted. In addition the applicant volunteered two further conditions relating to additional marshals on the boundary during event days and an approved site plan ahead of any large event. The Panel agreed that these additional conditions should be implemented. The Panel noted that Mediation had been sought with the two resident objectors but this had not taken place.

The Panel decided that granting the Variation of Premises License would not have an adverse impact on the promotion of the four licensing objectives, and agreed, by majority decision, to grant the Licence. The Licensing Section will send you a copy of the Licence in due course.

Reasons

The reasons for the decision are that the Panel found no evidence in the written submissions by the interested parties to suggest that incidents of anti-social behaviour would increase as a result of the premises licence.  Also no representations had been received by the Police with regards to this or any of the four licensing objectives. The panel did however have concerns about the impact of the extended licensed area permitting licensable activities close to the properties of the objectors and believe that the conditions volunteered by the applicant were a proportionate method for promoting the licensing objectives and providing some comfort to the property owners that licensed activities on the site should not cause noise nuisance or general  ...  view the full minutes text for item 38.