challenge 25 policy - East Lindsey District Council

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I hope my view will help in the decision in implementing Challenge 25. N.B. The extract from the Talking Retail website (www.talkingretail.com) referred to by the Police Licensing Officer is at Appendix C of this Report. 3.13 Kurnia Intertade Limited: As you are aware our company operate seven licensed premises within Lincolnshire and also have a consultancy and training company specialising in all areas of the licensed trade under the Licensing Act 2003 and Gambling Act 2005. We feel that the use of Challenge 21 should be promoted with Challenge 25 being left to the discretion of the premises. Our company fully supports and promotes Challenge 21. We would however not support or recommend Challenge 25 unless we felt it necessary for a particular premises. We do not know of any evidence why Challenge 21 is not effective and therefore, if there is no evidence of it being not being effective then, why increase the age to 25? The issue that should however be addressed is that of premises that do not conduct a challenge scheme whatsoever as mentioned in previous correspondence. We feel that premises that are not operating any type of challenge policy are the ones where underage sales are taking place. There is little point in encouraging a scheme of any age if a premises simply chooses not to operate it. As you aware it is not illegal for a premises to sell alcohol to a person who is aged 18 or over. The use of a challenge scheme therefore is at the discretion of the individual who serves the alcohol. We assume that your Committee may be considering the recommending of using either Challenge 21 or Challenge 25. To try and impose the use of either scheme as a condition at Review could lead to a challenge at Appeal. The Home Office in their draft Code of Practice for Alcohol Retailers only suggest a Challenge 21 scheme as a discretionary condition for problem premises. It is therefore questionable that if the Home Office have considered that Challenge 21 is sufficient for problem premises then why would an Authority be considering Challenge 25? BBPA stated in their response to the Home Office consultation: ‘We believe that the local discretionary condition which could require a premise to operate a Challenge 21 scheme is potentially problematic with regard to age discrimination. The condition would require the premises to ask to see proof of age where it is perceived by the person making the sale that the purchaser is under 21 years of age.
The law is only breached if a sale is made to someone under the age of 18, not if someone looked over 18 but was under 21. However, this condition could make this an offence in the event of disputes between premises and Enforcement Authorities on how old someone looks. Such a judgement is, obviously, subjective. Due to the rigorous way in which our members are tackling under-age sales, the attachment of this condition to licences could encourage many operators to operate age policies such as “Over 21s only” in order to comply, which could be deemed discriminatory. We urge the Government to reconsider the inclusion of Challenge 21 or Challenge 25 as a possible discretionary local condition, and allow the industry to continue to operate high standards of good practice in this area while those intent on breaking the law are made subject to the maximum penalties available under existing legislation by the enforcement authorities’ British Institute of Inn Keeping (BII) stated in their response to the consultation; ‘BII members are in support of the Challenge 21 scheme which is well established in the on trade. In this instance we concur with the views of BBPA in their response to this condition.’ We have asked BBPA, BII and ALMR, of which we are members of, for their views. Once we have their comments we shall forward them on to you. To conclude our company wishes to request that the Committee retains the ‘encouragement’ of Challenge 21 as the evidence suggests that Challenge 21 is effective and workable. 3.14. BBPA: I would just emphasise that we (BBPA) are totally committed to Challenge 21. As you know we have given away thousands of posters to premises all over the country and research has shown that Challenge 21 has been widely accepted by the industry and is recognised by youngsters. Even the Home Office refers to Challenge 21 rather than other schemes although as it has been pointed out at the consultations we wouldn't want it to be a mandatory condition as the offence relates to serving under 18s. As you rightly point out there is nothing to stop individual outlets adopting Challenge 25 or as …… might say, Challenge 37 and a half, but the more age levels you have the more crazy the whole thing is so we would encourage the continued use of Challenge 21.
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challenge 25 policy - East Lindsey District Council

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