Licensing Committee - Tuesday 9 June 2026, 7:05pm - Tower Hamlets Council webcasts

Licensing Committee
Tuesday, 9th June 2026 at 7:05pm 

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of the Licencing Regulatory Committee.
I'm Councillor Peter Golds. I chair the Licencing Committee of the London Borough of town.
For the purpose of this evening,
I will be chair of... well, I am the chair of both meetings, but I'm formalising that.
So if that could be recorded, thank you very much.
I now move to apologies for absence. Ms. Yesma, do I have any apologies?
No, Chair. No apologies for absence.
I have no apologies for absence. The next item is the appointment of a Vice -Chair of the Committee
for the Municipal Year 2006 -20
2026 2027 do I have a nomination? Yes.
Councillor Wahid. Can I nominate a
councillor? Yes.
Chair, I'd like to second that nomination. Thank you. Do I have any other
nominations?
I have no other nominations therefore the council
therefore that the election stands as it is. Thank you very much and I look forward to
I'm very happy to be welcoming you for the municipal year.
Do we have any declaration of interest?
Page is 5 to 6 on our agenda.
No declaration of interest.
Do we have minutes of the previous meeting, 7 to 18?
I was certainly present.
Councillor Schubo, Hussein was present.
I propose they are accepted.
Do you second, Councillor Hussein?
Thank you very much.
Can I now put those to the meeting?
All those in favour?
Agreed.
Thank you very much.
minutes are done. Item 4 .1 is item for consideration, which is the licencing regulatory committee
terms of reference membership and quorum. Ms. Jesmyn, this is a very quick paper.
Thank you, Chair. This is just a report that sets out the terms of reference membership
and quorum of the licencing regulatory committee. Members are asked to note the report. Thank
you, Chair. Thank you very much. You've heard Ms. Jesmyn,
We got the paper before us, item 4 .1, which is 19 on the agenda.
Are there any questions?
I have no questions.
It's fully felt.
There are no questions.
So, therefore, we note the papers.
Is that all agreed?
Thank you very much.
That's the conclusion of the Licencing Regulatory Committee for this evening.
I now move on to the main licencing agenda, which is...
Apologies for absence Ms Jesmyn.
No apologies chair, thank you.
Thank you very much.
I informally say for everybody this meeting is being held in person.
Committee members, participants are present in the meeting.
Only the committee members present here can vote but anybody else could speak if they
so wish.
The meeting is filmed for the public but it doesn't film members of the gallery.
I would remind everybody only to speak when I call them and to switch on and off the little
red thing, because otherwise, particularly when it's all switched on for the television, it goes berserk.
You will find it just goes wee wee wee wee wee, and it sounds like we're all going to Mars or something.
I'd rather we stayed at Hamlet's Town Hall.
We've only got no apologies for absence. Do any members have a disposable declaration of interest?
No Member has a disposable Declaration of Interest.
Could Members agree the unrestricted minutes of the Licencing Committee held on the 3rd
of June, 9 to 12 in this meeting?
I was there, Councillor Hussain was there.
I agree with you.
Do you second them?
All those in favour?
Thank you very much.
That would appear to be carried.
Thank you very much.
We now come to terms of reference, pages 13 to 22.
Ms. Jesmin.
Thank you, Chair.
Again, this is the terms of reference membership and quorum of the licencing committee.
Members are asked to note the report.
Do we agree all of that?
Thank you very, very much.
Item 3 .2, which is the establishing of the licencing subcommittees, terms of references and meeting dates.
Simee, would you like to talk about this?
I will make a couple of initial...
Sure.
Thank you, Chair.
Again, this report is to establish the Licencing Subcommittee, note its terms of reference,
meeting dates and appoint Licencing Subcommittee Chairs.
Members are invited to nominate themselves or other members of the Committee to be appointed
as Subcommittee Chairs.
There are no specific limit to the number of Subcommittee Chairs we can appoint.
So over to members.
Could we start on that? I mean we can all try to do. I would initially like to nominate as the subcommittee chairs, obviously myself and the vice chair will be as apparent as possible.
We tried to circulate it. At the first cycle I think it should be experienced members and we have Councillor Sabina Act, our Councillor Shubow Hussain, both of whom chaired meetings consistently over several years.
If for the first cycle if we could move on for that and then we move on to the second cycle other members will have
Joined in and seen the meeting see how they work and then I think it would be a good time to put themselves forward for
That how do people feel about that? Is that a way to move forward?
councillor
I totally agree with you what you said, but I think also that
in order for us to
Give opportunity to new members
the opportunity to have that experience as well.
So I totally agree with what you said, but I think also new members who should be given an opportunity to basically partake in that.
Okay, if I could just add in, I do agree with experienced members, but I might add that it might be good to get the new members to join
and what I can do is obviously circulate membership accordingly once that members of, like experienced members have sat with the new members just to get some experience.
So if people want to nominate themselves.
Yeah, because I know Councillor Rupert George wanted to put his name forward, so if anybody else would like to put their name forward for future meetings.
Councillor Sabina, please.
Yeah, he already said.
Oh, what's your name?
Can I nominate Councillor Abdul -Madden?
Yes.
Councillor Abou -Rahman?
Yes.
Sorry.
I can't read everything.
I apologise.
Look, I apologise if you can't read everything sometimes.
Also, can I nominate...
Councillor Lutten?
Yes.
Councillor Victoria?
Yes.
Councillor Victoria?
Yes.
Councillor Faisal Ahmed as well, please.
Yes, Councillor Ahmed.
Super.
Okay.
That's quite a good start.
I think we can work on that.
Just a question, Peter.
Because if I'm known as a vie chair...
There!
I said at the beginning, it's myself, the vie chair,
and then the two, the two most experienced ones.
So we've got quite a balance.
I'd like to get people involved.
Why did you want to...
Did you say you were going to circulate the...
Yeah, yeah.
That's okay?
Thank you for that.
But I think experienced counsellors get involved.
Let me learn the role a little bit more, then probably I'll get the role at once.
Sorry, can you not hear me?
So I said let experienced counsellors get involved first.
Let me learn the system first, then afterwards.
But at the moment, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to hear you.
I'll stay away.
Yeah, it's okay.
I do think, bearing in mind of the legal pitfalls, it will be worth going with the experienced
councillors for the first cycle, then gradually working your way in.
But I will be worried about suddenly offering to do something and then finding yourself
with David Dadd sitting on the other side.
Just to confirm, I've got yourself and the Vice Chair, Councillor Sulek Ahmed,
Council Sabina actor, Councillor Shubo Hussain, Councillor Rupert George, Councillor Abdomenon,
and Councillor Victor Lipton as licencing sub -committee chairs.
I think that's a really good start, so let's start working with that and see how we progress.
Is everybody happy on that? I try and get consensus on this meeting. We don't have big
votes on licencing except on issues. We're all happy. That's really young. Thank you
very much. We now move to the late night levy, the annual review, pages 31 to 44, which is
3 .3 on our agenda. Mr Lewis.
Thank you, Chair. I will pass to my colleague Ibrahim Hussein to take you through the details of the report.
Does anybody have any questions on the late night levy?
Because it is basically something we have to do every year, and we levy this.
Does anybody have a question? I'm happy to put the report before the meeting.
Are you all happy? Tom, you've done a brilliant job.
Credit where credit's due, it is Ibrahim that runs it and coordinates it.
Well Ibrahim, thank you, you've done a brilliant job. You've managed to get it through without too many questions.
Item 3 .4 is Prosecutions and Appeals Report, pages 45 to 50.
Can we look at that? Can Mr Melnick do that? Because this is an important one, I don't want to skip to this too quickly.
Okay, in that case would you like me to go to the front? Or would you rather I sit here?
No, no, I did it from the desk like everybody else was saying.
No, that's why I meant to.
No, no, do it from here.
Okay, fine. Well, obviously for those who don't know me, I'm Jonathan Melnick, I'm the Principal Enforcement Lawyer with In Tower Hamlet.
I basically manage the team of prosecuting lawyers in the council
and I'm also your main legal advisor for the subcommittee and the licencing committee.
Basically, this report is just a report on purely licencing -related prosecutions and appeals for the calendar year 2025.
You've got the details of the report on page...
My number has gone rather odd. I think it looks like it's almost 50 minutes.
There's some information there about how we make our prosecution decisions and what our duties are.
The report's predominantly because of the nature of the work that we do.
It's mostly focused on the Licencing Act 2003, with which you will all become eminently familiar over the next four years.
but it does deal where appropriate with all of our regulatory licencing,
such as special treatments and gambling and such like.
And then quite often what we'll find is that officers may go in
and deal with, say, an underage sale, and then they might find other things.
One of the cases you'll hear about in a moment was an underage sale
of a knife that then resulted in officers realising,
hang on a minute, this place is selling alcohol without a licence,
and been doing so for about two years.
So that's the sort of work that we cover, and I do want to just emphasise that it's a very, very small fraction of the work that me and my team do.
So if you look at this and think, is that all they've done over the last year? No, it's not. It's all we've done in relation to these.
It's also worth bearing in mind that sometimes our cases can take a while to conclude for various reasons. They might go to trial.
There are just backlogs in the court. That's quite well known.
and so it can take a while for our cases to go through.
If we move to, I think it's page, on my report it's page 7, above the page number, it might be easier if we look at that.
49.
Ah, thank you.
So we had five prosecution cases concluded.
These are mostly underage sales and relations alcohol, really.
Case number two was the most interesting one.
That was a company, it's director and the seller.
The seller was fined for an underage knife sale,
but it was this particular case that resulted
in officers realising that the premises were selling alcohol
they test purchased and the underage knife sale
was a 10 ,000 pounds fine.
There was a 12 ,800 pound fine effectively
for the alcohol sales and various costs.
and what have you. It's probably one of the biggest ones I've done in that regard.
The rest, if I'm entirely honest, are fairly straightforward, with the exception of number 4 on page 50.
They're underage sales of alcohol.
And you'll see that there's sometimes a little bit of a disparity with 1, number 5, Miss HK, for various reasons.
afterwards commenced proceedings more information came to light in the case
against her was disposed of by whatever caution we had a very very small number
of appeals in that calendar concluded in that calendar year those are just simply
detailed one was just a settlement by consent the second one was a withdrawal
it was a late -night refreshment application and third is a refusal to
Do an SEV licence that was settled again by consent?
I'm not going to go into the details of that one if members want any more information about that
My advice would be that you need to go to private meeting for that. Yeah, that's effectively my
My report happy to take any questions
Are there any questions? Mr. Melny?
God this is a meeting of science. I think I'm the issue of of the NAGS head etc
This will be a meeting perhaps on the licencing committee on a closed session because I really
will need, I think we will need to discuss on SEV licences if there are any applications
exactly what they are, what we can do and what we can't do, but we can't get ourselves
in a situation where we could end up in a court and cost discounts of tens of thousands
of pounds. So I think that will be an occasion for a discussion below the line so we can
is everybody happy in which case I formally closed the meeting thank you
all for your attendance thank you
Thank you.
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Thank you.