Ernie Clark. Hilperton Division, Wiltshire Council.

"The new regime is not biased towards publicans".
Tessa Jowell and James Purnell of the government's "Department for Culture, Media and Sport" have written to councils to allay concerns that the new regime was biased towards publicans and against residents.

They say, "There is no presumption in the act for longer hours over objections from local residents and organisations. Where there are objections and the licensing committee believes that changing the hours would undermine the statutory licensing objectives they can reject the application or grant it with appropriate conditions and/or different hours from those requested."

The new licensing rules come fully into effect on November 24th and West Wiltshire District Council officers have handled the changeover with no major crises.

It will be interesting to see what impact the new legislation has in, say, Trowbridge as the idea was to end the '11 o'clock swill' and stagger (sorry for the pun) closing times, thus reducing the possibilty of trouble in the street. Judging from many applications however, all that is going to happen is that any trouble will simply be postponed; this is due to the fact that once one pub has gone for 2 a.m. closing then all the others try for the same. After all, what business wants to close earlier than their rivals and see their trade heading off down the street?