The S P F Blog

We, licensed trade stocktakers, have an industry body; The Institute Of Licensed Trade Stock Auditors. I have so many issues with this organisation I don’t know where to start, but in the interests of venting I will give it a go

1 – I have a major problem with the word ‘auditor’. Auditors, to my mind, are accountants with an extra qualification. It’s wrong of us to give ourselves grand titles without earning the right to.

2 – The ILTSA, according to themselves, is ( are? ) ‘the only qualifying body for stock takers within the Licensed Trade’. Now, this is true but is their qualification worth having?

For instance:

Venners, the biggest stocktaking company in the UK do not have any ILTSA recognition on their website; they are not ILTSA members. Does this mean all the stocktakers working for Venners are not fit for purpose? Hmm, how about Capcon? A national company operating to ISO 9001 Gold Award standards and part of Capcon Holdings PLC? All their stocktakers are not qualified either according to ILTSA.

Me After a 25 year plus industry career, the last 15 as a stocktaker, ILTSA will tell you I’m not qualified to do the job. In fact, their ‘qualified’ stocktakers may well telephone my clients ( again ) and point out my shortcomings.

Their ‘qualification’ is a three hour exam consisting of some 20 questions, 18 of which are compulsory. There is no compulsion to carry out any training prior to taking the exam though, you can download the form, book the exam ( sorry, pay your fee when you book the exam ) and assuming you pass you are qualified.

The training course deserves special comment. The ILTSA will take around £600 off somebody, put them through a 3 day training course, charge them another few quid ( can’t be bothered looking ) for an examination fee and, assuming they pass, give them some letters after their name to prove that they are a qualified ’stock auditor’. This, to me, seems a pretty dangerous way to introduce someone to the inner sanctum of your business but, of course, the guys that have the qualifications know best right?

I realise that my rantings could be interpreted as just another dis-gruntled moaner having a pop and that ILTSA are nothing but a bunch of splendid chaps trying to educate the ignorant and control an industry ripe for exploitation of the vulnerable and susceptible, so why not have a look at their website?

ILTSA Exam Booking Form

To reserve tour place on an ILTSA Exam, please use the link below to download and booking form and once completed, please post this back to ILTSA sending a cheque payable to “The ILTSA” with it. All rates exclude VAT @ 17.5% and a receipt will be sent once payment has cleared.

This is the best laugh I’ve had in a while. I think they may have subbed their copy writing out to an Eastern European call centre…

I’m on the phone talking to Sky about their ‘up to 20mb’ broadband speed. My stance is that their advertising is so scandalously exaggerated that it borders on deception and that they might as well offer ‘up too 100mb’

This is the speed test on my line, I’m 1000 metres from the exchange, 20mb broadband is absolute pie in the sky for most of us.

Short answer – yes.

Longer answer – Since the fire reform regulations came into force the onus has been very much on the ‘responsible person’, if that is you then regardless of whether you did the risk assessment yourself or not it is very much your affair, so your interests will be best served by being very involved even if you get a contractor in.

Sad to see the Windmill close its doors for the last time. Nothing to do with compliance matters this time, just the state of the industry and the reality that the most valuable thing about many pubs these days is the land they are sat on.

There are a few locally that are about to be built on, the Fernhill in Preesall and the Royal Oak in Poulton, now the Windmill and the Mariners has been a heap of rubble for some time, with surely more to come.

I’m not normally one to shed a tear over pub closures, the market decides what is viable and those that are not need to be something else. There is something sad about a community pub like the Windmill coming the the end of its life though, particularly to be replaced by a Tesco. Just what we need, another supermarket…

It occurred to us this week that, given that it usually costs an awful lot of money to engage a consultant, some business operators may have pre-conceived ideas about the cost of buying in risk assessment services.

The system we use is based on a piece of software that we have developed in-house. This means that the reporting system is quick and easy to use, we print reports on site and have not yet found a site that we could not do a thorough risk assessment on in a single day.

Given that the task only takes a day, we offer the service at £250 plus the dreaded VAT. This is for a licensing risk assessment, a health and safety risk assessment or a fire risk assessment.

We also have the ability to produce a health and safety policy and COSHH assessments on site plus a large selection of notices and signs as may be needed.

There are no hidden costs, we don’t try to stick you for extras. If you want to save some money and do your own risk assessments we can supply a pack with templates in for £75.

In either case, whether we do the job for you or you buy a pack and do the risk assessment yourself, there is a forum within the website with good information already posted and where you can find some help and support.

This question reared its head this week and the answer is, almost inevitably, probably you.

There are a gazillion possible scenarios, so let’s just have a look at a couple

1 Contractor is appointed without you checking on their health and safety arrangements, competence to do the job and insurance. If there is an accident, regardless of fault, it will without doubt come down on the ‘responsible person’ – you.

2 Contractor is appointed and checked for competence, insurance and health and safety arrangements. Whilst on site, the contractor leaves a cellar hatch open in the floor and a customer falls down it. Has to be down to the contractor right? Erm, no actually. This would come down on the ‘responsible person’ – you again.

Notice the running theme? Yep; it’s always down to you. The reality is that, as the responsible person, everything that happens within the building or business that you are responsible for is going to come down to you.

The lesson is twofold:

Firstly, make sure that any contractors you appoint take their health and safety responsibilities as seriously as you do; make sure that they are insured, that their staff are trained and that they are capable of completing the task in hand safely and competently.

Secondly. When you have contractors on site be sure not to make the mistake of assuming that they will take the same amount of care as you do. Retain complete control of your business or building, and don’t be afraid of managing your contractors every bit as completely as you manage your staff, whether they like it or not.

We have to live in the real world, so what would this look like in the day to day running of a business? Well, how about a for instance?

Would I, for instance, employ a window cleaner who turned up with his ladders on a hand cart with the idea that ‘public liability’ was a medical condition and that health and safety risk assessments were for ponces?

Sadly the answer is ‘no’. The world we live in is way too litigious and for every second that that guy is on my premises I’m responsible for everything he does and everything that happens.

Looking at all the horror stories we have gathered, the Challenge 21 campaign is still gaining way too many ’successes’ in terms of failed test purchases.

We think that won’t change until we see licensees taking their staff training and record keeping seriously, but also until young people in this country get used to the idea that they need to be able to prove their age when asked.

It’s unfortunate but many members of front line staff don’t implement an effective Challenge 21 policy. It may be from a lack of training but, equally, it may well be out of a fear of abuse; ‘are you calling me a liar/I come here all the time/I know where you live’ etc. etc.

In other countries, Australia and America for instance, people routinely produce ID and think nothing of it; it’s just what happens when you buy alcohol in those places.

Until we can get young people to understand that it’s not an invasion of privacy or a personal sleight the onus will remain on the licensee to be vigilant. Clearly, too many are not vigilant enough and the trading standards enforcement officers remain way busier than they should be…

There seems to be a clamour among the licensed trade for minimum pricing per unit of alcohol, a concept being mooted by what would normally be seen as opponents of the industry; health lobbies and the like.

I can’t help thinking that licensees voting for minimum pricing is akin to turkeys voting for Christmas; not really in our best interests.

Looking back over the last twenty odd years it’s starkly obvious where the last set of government fingerprints are and we are still dealing with the consequences.

What came to be known as ‘The Beer Orders’ of the late 1980s forced the ‘Big Six’ brewers of the day to shed thousands of tied sites in a ham fisted attempt to increase competition. The ultimate result is what we see around us; the demise of regional brewers like  Boddingtons, Greenalls and Tetley to name a few, the rise of super-brewers such as Heineken and Interbrew, and the birth of the much maligned pubcos, the obvious examples being Punch and Enterprise.

Government ministers were, in late 2009, quite candidly saying that they had ‘got it wrong’ and jostling for another chance to get their hands on our industry. I’m kind of horrified to see so many industry insiders nodding their heads and believing what they hear when the politicians start pontificating on the subject of the licensed trade.

Anyone thinking that minimum alcohol pricing might be a good idea would do well to look back at recent history and realise just what a horlicks the politicians made of it last time, start looking at them with a degree of scepticism and begin to fear unintended consequences.

We’ve been posting stories of licensing closures for some time now so always have an eye open for them. This batch of closures in the Nottingham area look like a change of pace:

Notts Police Force Pubs To Close

It seems that relatively minor breaches of licence conditions are now bringing closure notices.

‘Relatively Minor’ includes failing to keep CCTV footage for 31 days, failing to display details of a public entertainment licence and, somewhat pettily, failing to have a qualified first aider on site.

It’s often surprising just how many premises are in breach of their premises licence conditions. Many people don’t even know that there are conditions attached to their licence, where those conditions might be found, or even that failing to display their premises licence is a breach of their premises licence conditions!

We are seeing this more and more often now and the message is clear; get your house in order because the licensing authorities are upping the ante.

Understand what your obligations are and make sure that you comply to all the conditions you agreed to when your premises licence was granted. There is clearly a new mindset at work among compliance authorities.

Good to see Jongleurs making a comeback:

Jongleurs Nottingham Re-Opens

We are big fans of comedy over here and glad to see some of the old faces behind such a quality brand making it happen on the high street again. Stand by for a roll out of up to 12 new venues.