Premises Licences

Your Rights

Incidents involving alcohol can happen within or near licensed premises such as pubs and nightclubs.  Of course you need to be reasonable if you live next-door to a pub or club but there is a limit.  You should not have to accept disorder. Fighting, littering, using your street as a giant car-park for the club, drug-dealing and drug use, and using your garden as a toilet are wrong.

To go and talk to a club owner about problems like this is pretty intimidating.  If the Police have been called out then they will have talked to the pub/club owner about this, and even given a warning if they have been called out a lot of times.  Get a group together because probably others in your street are angry too.  As a group you will probably get results faster, especially with the Community Trigger (see here for more information on this).

If the problems continue, as a resident you can apply for the premises licence to be reviewed, a process which could mean that the pub/club will have to change or even need to close.  To ask for a review of a premises licence, you need to contact your Local Council and fill in an application form.  Council officers and other agencies such as the Police can also apply for a review of a premises licence on your behalf or in their own right.  Don't suffer such behaviour in silence - all licences have conditions attached.  If there is anti-social behaviour because of people coming to their pub/club it is their responsibility to act so that this stops.  They must make sure they are not a nuisance to local residents.