16/06/2026
Responding to Agency Concerns on Your Alcohol Licence Application — Without Shooting Yourself in the Foot
If the Police, licensing inspector, or Medical Officer of Health have filed reports opposing or raising concerns about your alcohol licence application, your instinct might be to push back hard.
Resist it.
Here's why — and what to do instead.
Suitability cuts both ways.
Licensing committees don't just assess your premises and trading hours. They assess you. How you engage with the process — including how you respond to agency concerns — tells the committee something about how you'll operate if granted a licence. An applicant who dismisses agency concerns or treats the reporting agencies as adversaries can raise doubts about whether they'll engage constructively with authorities once licensed.
Before the hearing:
— Read every report carefully and identify the specific concerns raised. Vague opposition is different from a targeted objection about security, hours, or locality.
— Where concerns are valid or partially valid, address them proactively. Amend your application, propose conditions, or provide additional evidence. This demonstrates good faith and often narrows the issues before you even walk in.
— Engage with the agencies directly where appropriate. A conversation with the licensing inspector or police licensing officer ahead of the hearing can resolve misunderstandings, signal your willingness to work collaboratively, and sometimes result in concerns being withdrawn or softened.
— Take independent advice on whether proposed conditions would be workable. Accepting unworkable conditions to appear cooperative can cause bigger problems down the line.
At the hearing:
— Acknowledge concerns respectfully, even where you disagree. For example, "We understand the inspector's concern about late-night trading in this area, and here is how our management plan addresses it" lands very differently from "the inspector is wrong."
— Lead with evidence, not emotion. Bring your noise management plan, your host responsibility policy, your security arrangements, your staff training records. Let the documentation do the heavy lifting.
— If you genuinely dispute a factual basis for a concern, do so calmly and specifically. Challenge the evidence, not the agency.
— Where you're offering conditions in response to concerns, be precise. Vague offerings carry little weight.
The agencies aren't your opponents — they're part of the same framework your licence will sit within. Committees notice when an applicant understands that.
