2012/2/7 'Dragon' Dave McKee <[email protected]>: > Me and my friends are currently mildly miffed with the local council > about the meaning of "working days" (with specific regards to alcohol > licencing): if an application is submitted during the weekend for an > event a fortnight later, and there's no bank holidays in between, has > it been submitted ten working days in advance?
I think your disagreement may not be about the meaning of "working day" but about the method by which notices are given to the council. > > The council says no; the application is deemed to have been submitted > on the Monday and hence there aren't ten clear working days. > We obviously want the answer to be yes, and have some circumstantial > evidence in the form of > http://moderngov.cheshireeast.gov.uk/ecminutes/Published/C00000242/M00002542/AI00007234/$07ClearWorkingDaysreport.docA.ps.pdf > [not the council in question] Assuming you have in mind an application for a temporary event notice under s100 of the Licensing Act 2003: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/17/part/5/crossheading/temporary-event-notices Section 100(7)(a) requires that the notice: "must be given to the relevant licensing authority no later than ten working days before the day on which the event period begins" which does not refer to "clear" days but does imply that ten clear days are needed. That would imply that a notice given on the Sunday would be good for an event two weekends later. "working day" is defined, as it happens, in section 193: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/17/section/193 which says pretty much what you'd think it says. The difficulty is whether and how you can give a notice on the Sunday. The word "give" (and its equivalent "serve") are used in many places in legislation and are generally interpreted by the courts in a fairly common-sense fashion without technicality. I don't know of any authorities generally on service of notices by email (outside the civil procedure rules which are rather special) and its the sort of thing I probably would know about. My suspicion is that a court would be reluctant to understand "give" in that wide sense, because the recipient may not have collected their email. However if you are thinking about a temporary exemption notice under the 2003 Act, there are some specific provisions about giving notices: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/17/section/184 "the relevant document must be given by addressing it to the authority and leaving it at or sending it by post to (the authority's address)" The mere sending of an email is neither of those things. So, unless there's some special additional rule or practice, a notice by email would be bad. There's no "deeming" provision in there, but the council may consider that if they have received and opened the email the document has (at that point) been "left at" their address and so s184 has been complied with. > > I've got a funny feeling this has come up before in reference to > WhatDoTheyKnow and perhaps other sites, hence why I'm asking here: can > anyone shine any light on this? > > All responses will be assumed to have "I am not a lawyer, but..." prepended. > :P > In my case just prepend "I am not your lawyer" or something like that. -- Francis Davey _______________________________________________ developers-public mailing list [email protected] https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public Unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/archive%40mail-archive.com
