High Court quashes Albert Hall licence variation over council's flawed resident notification procedure

A decision to grant a premises licence variation allowing the staging of boxing and wrestling at the Albert Hall in London has been quashed by the High Court over the way Westminster City Council used a computer to identify residents in the vicinity for notification.

In Albert Court Residents Association & Ors, R (on the application of) v Corporation of the Hall of Arts & Sciences [2010] EWHC 393 (Admin), it was revealed that the Albert Hall had a long history of staging boxing and wrestling events going back to the 1920s. However, an application for those activities to be allowed to take place was omitted in 2005 when a new premises licence application was made as part of the switch to the Licensing Act.

The occupier of the hall, the Corporation of the Hall of Arts & Sciences, applied for a variation of its premises licence in December 2008 to rectify the situation. It also asked for an extension to its opening hours and the time for serving light refreshments.

The council then sent 100 letters to residents within a 100-metre circle around the Albert Hall. The claimants lived in Albert Court, which was touched in part by the circle but not to such an extent that it triggered the council's computer software to react.

None of the claimants therefore made representations to the council about the application until after 19 January 2009, the required cut-off date under the Act. However, they subsequently made representations about perceived problems of anti-social behaviour, public safety, noise and disturbance and degradation of the surrounding area.

The council refused to consider those representations and on 25 May 2009, the application was granted. The claimants then claimed that the council had been wrong to conclude it was prohibited from considering their late representations, and that having promised to notify residents, it had failed adequately to do so, frustrating “a legitimate expectation on their part”.

In the High Court, Mr Justice McCombe rejected the claimants’ submissions in relation to late representations but quashed the granting of the application on the basis of the council’s failure to properly carry out its own published practice of notifying residents “in the relevant immediate vicinity”.

The judge said the number of potential residents to notify rather than the location of properties “seems to have steered the exercise [of selection] in the end”.

He added: “No one seems to have considered the simple exercise of common sense and discretion by looking at the map or going to take a look on site, even in respect of this Hall, which must be one of the largest entertainment venues in the land. It seemed to me that this process was simply dictated mindlessly by the database, even though its results could be seen to be bizarre on the briefest glance at the plan itself.”

This meant that “what happened here was so bad as to be irrational and, therefore, unlawful”.