Agenda and draft 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.

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the meeting held on 1 February 2024 and the Annual Meeting on 15 May 2024.

The minutes of the previous meeting held on 1 February 2024 and of the annual meeting held on 15 May 2024 were approved as a correct record and signed by the Chair.

There were no urgent items of business.

There were no applications for public speaking.

To receive an update on the work of the Licensing and Safety Committee, Licensing Panel and Licensing Service in 2023/24.

Julia O’Brien, Licensing Manager, presented an overview of the Licensing & Safety Committee Annual Report 2023/24 and highlighted a number of areas of the work of the Public Protection Partnership including:

·        The role of the Public Protection Partnership

·        Licensing numbers and trends across the year

·        Emerging issues in the Licensing remit

In response to questions, the following points were noted:

·        Another team within the Public Protection Partnership administered caravan parks, and this information could be shared with members on request and would be included in next year’s annual report.

·        The enforcement regime would work on a risk rated basis, with period inspections similar to food hygiene inspections. The regime would cover all licensed premises.

·        Trading Standards could be approached to discuss possible steps to encourage premises to adopt environmentally friendlier practices, such as a move away from single use plastics. However, members were reminded of the limited resource in the Public Protection Partnership and the focus must remain on core duties of each team.

·        Licensing officers met regularly with Thames Valley Police to discuss work to reduce violence against women and girls, and drink spiking prevention including special seasonal campaigns. Licensing officers were also members of Pub Watch, which had been considering the matter of drink spiking for some time. Members were reassured that there had not been a specific complaint received by the Public Protection Partnership in relation to drink spiking in Bracknell Forest.

·        Housing colleagues were looking into Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMOs) and any potential HMOs which had not been registered. If any resident was aware of a potential HMO, they should contact the Public Protection Partnership to investigate.

·        Licensing officers took a light-touch approach to Temporary Event Notices, the majority of which were seasonal community events such as school fetes and summer fairs.

·        Members were reminded that events in the town centre were not a matter for the Public Protection Partnership and should be addressed with the landowner, which was either the Council or the Lexicon.

Having discussed the matter it was RESOLVED that the Annual Report 2023/24 as set out in Appendix A be approved.