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Q: A few months ago I took over a public house and I have noticed that there is a condition on the Premises Licence requiring the use of at least three door supervisors for Friday and Saturday nights from 7pm. This appears excessive with not only the requirement to have a minimum of 3 but I have also noticed that over the last few months customers are visiting the premises at a later time and the premises is not getting busy until at least 9pm, and therefore having door staff from 7pm is also very costly. We are licensed until 01:00 hours on Fridays and Saturdays and I wonder what my options are in relation to changing this condition?
A: You may want to vary your licence to change the door staff condition so that either the door staff start later, are reduced in number or indeed that the condition itself is removed in its entirety. It would be prudent whichever option you wish to carry out that consultation is undertaken beforehand with the Police, Licensing Authority and Environmental Health to make sure that they have no issues with what you are proposing. Also if you can show that there have been no incidents at the premises then this would work in your favour and it may even be possible to deal with the change by way of minor variation. Sometimes it may even be possible to agree a wording for the condition along the lines of, ‘The need for door supervisors will be assessed by way of risk assessment and consideration will be taken of any Police advice.’
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