The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
Banning shops from selling single cans and high alcohol volume beer and cider are measures being called for by police.
They were part of steps Lincolnshire Police requested be taken as part of South Holland District Council’s revised Licensing Act Statement of Principles.
The document needs to be renewed by January and police have asked the council to include further measures.
Along with banning the sale of single cans, and beers and cider with high alcohol content, they also suggested shops should also attach waterproof labels to bottles and cans with their details to allow them to be traced.
Police also asked for a strengthening of the district’s CCTV policy so it’s provided as part of a licencing application.
“They’re measures they believe will help tackle street drinkers,” licensing and business support manager Donna Hall told the meeting.
The measures would be for new applications or requests for variances of a licence. Councillors would have to decide if the measures relate to certain areas, or the whole district.
At last week’s meeting of the Licensing Committee councillors voted to include the called for measures as recommendations in the policy, rather than policy itself.
It means they will appear in the Statement of Principles as something the council ‘may expect’ from shop owners.
The meeting heard that making them policy would need the council to undertake another public consultation, which members felt the authority would struggle to do before a policy would need to have been voted through in January.
Instead councillors agreed to look at the police’s requests again as an amendment to the policy next year.
Coun Andrew Woolf said: “The police feel quite strongly it should be in there, but at the same time, we don’t want to hold this up any further.”
Coun Tyrrell added: “I’m all for finding out who is littering and the single cans and the cameras, I agree with all these things. I’m just worried we’re putting too much pressure on businesses at the moment.
“If there’s problems with a particular businesses it will come to this panel anyway
“If there’s an issue we can always go back and review our policy.”
Coun Neil Bingham said: “I welcome the idea of banning single cans as it can only promote cleaning up the town centres and would be a massive deterrent on street drinking.”
