TOPIC:

There's a pub near me that's been closed for about 2 years as the people behind it got themselves into financial difficulty.

I remember it used to be the case that to retain your licence you had to trade for at least one day in the calendar year, otherwise the licence would be extinguished.

Does anyone know is this still the case, and is it an absolute necessity or can there be exceptions to the rule?

Pub licences aren't as expensive as they used to be, but they still add a helluva lot of value to a premises.

I think you had to sell one drink ..

a friend of a friend of a ....... told me of a friends( <!-- s:D --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_biggrin.gif" alt="" title="Very Happy" /><!-- s:D --> ) family pub that had been shut for a few years - still had the license - said they renewed it every year & just said it was open at least one day a year - reckoned it wasn't too rigorously checked though

I'd been meaning to look this up: thanks for the reminder!

[i:1hcl8wks]Cassidy on Licensing[/i:1hcl8wks] (the Bible, as far as this stuff goes) says that licences are [i:1hcl8wks]per se[/i:1hcl8wks] unconditional. However, she also says that there's an unwritten obligation to trade, and there is precedent for the refusal of renewal of a licence if there's no trading happening, and especially if there seems to be no [i:1hcl8wks]intention[/i:1hcl8wks] of trading. The idea is to stop people from building up a licence bank while we all go thirsty.

It sounds to me like opening one token day a year should no more protect you from having your licence extinguished than opening no days, but I'm not surprised that it doesn't work like that.

So it's probably safe to put it this way:

If you don't want to trade you have to trade one day a year to make it look like you want to trade.
If you want to trade but can't due to extenuating circumstances (e.g. Nama), you will be able to keep your licence.

So it's probably also safe to say that even though this place hasn't traded for two years it's probably still licensed.

&amp;quot;Tube&amp;quot;:3lpb1g4j wrote: If you don't want to trade you have to trade one day a year to make it look like you want to trade.
If you want to trade but can't due to extenuating circumstances (e.g. Nama), you will be able to keep your licence.[/quote:3lpb1g4j]Yes, though you might need to stick a great big YMMV on that. There's no guarantee that your one day a year will keep the judge happy (it certainly won't when I'm on the bench!) but anecdotally it seems to work.

&amp;quot;Tube&amp;quot;:3lpb1g4j wrote: So it's probably also safe to say that even though this place hasn't traded for two years it's probably still licensed.[/quote:3lpb1g4j]Most likely. Unless it has been totally abandoned and the owner doesn't give a toss about its resale value so hasn't been renewing its licence.

Interestingly, you can apply for any licence to be transferred to you if the holder has disappeared off the face of the earth. Handy!