Westway Development Trust: a developer's claims were "taken at face value" - 2/3

This auditor's report will make little sense if you haven't read Brian Deer's Notting Hell from The Sunday Times of June 17 2001. In July 2002 the trust renamed itself Westway Development Trust. A Westway Development Trust index of materials is also available

<<< Continued from district auditor's report part one

Fee waivers for public entertainment licences

Findings

13. The Royal Borough took over responsibility for licences from the GLC in 1986. There are no remaining records relating to the period 1986-1991. NKAT has been granted discretionary fee waivers by the Council at least since 1991 and, in the view of Council officers, probably since 1986.

14. The application forms up to 1996 were not designed to require the Trust to disclose information, which would have prompted more detailed scrutiny. Apart from details of the applicant and the premises, the form asked for the following information:

* the purpose for which entertainment was to be provided 'e.g., Charitable, fund raising educational, community, etc'

* the type of functions to be held e.g., social function, dance, discotheque, concert etc.

* the applicant to certify that 'the use of the premises will be solely for entertainment which is of an educational or other like character or is given for a charitable or other like purpose'.

15. The format of the form was changed in 1997 and additional questions and explanatory notes were added to elicit information on who would receive the proceeds of function held and whether the premises were ever rented out to a third party for any public or private events. As in prior years, the application form for 1997 was signed by the Trust's principal officer, Mr Roger Matland. There was no reference on the application form to the events held at Subterania that were promoted and managed on a commercial basis by a separate company (the Mean Fiddler Organisation). Mr Matland had subsequently written to the Town Clerk and Chief Executive Officer explaining his rationale for completing the form without reference to the use of the premises by the Mean Fiddler Organisation. We have also met with Mr Matland as part of this inquiry to discuss this issue.

16. In brief, Mr Matland explained that when he completed the application, he considered the nature of the relationship with the Mean Fiddler Organisation as a partnership and that the overall use of the facility still fell within the widely drawn objective of the Trust to provide 'recreation and leisure facilities' for the inhabitants of the Royal Borough and adjoining boroughs. In his view it was a matter for the Council to consider his application, make whatever inquiries it considered necessary and to either approve or reject NKAT's application.

17. License waiver applications from the Trust were not subject to detailed scrutiny between 1991 and 1997. Funding became available in 1997 to carry out "during performance" inspections and in late 1998 the Corporate Management Committee agreed to resource a full time enforcement officer for the licensing team.

18. Although there was increasing knowledge about the involvement of the Mean Fiddler in the operation of Subterania, the content of the 1997 application dated 22 August 1997 appears to have been accepted at face value. The value of the discretionary relief granted for 1997/98 was £6331(80% of the full application fee). The officers at the time were either unaware of the extent of the more commercial nature of activities taking place at Subterania or did not consider these were significant enough to affect the discretionary waiver. However, issues raised at the subsequent Licensing (Hearings) Committee in February 1998 regarding the involvement of the Mean Fiddler Organisation prompted further investigation which led to the withdrawal of the discretionary relief in 1999 in respect of 1998/99.

19. One important factor in considering the applications is the discretionary nature of the relief. This is a locally exercised discretion which followed the practice of the GLC that a partial waiver could be granted to a charity or similar body if the entertainment provided was educational or charitable in nature but did not meet the 'entirely' requirement necessary to qualify for the statutory 100% fee waiver. The criteria for partial waiver involved a judgement about the balance of non-charitable use. The basis for granting discretion was clarified early in 1999 in a decision approved by the Environmental Services Committee that 'the full fee should be charged when, in the opinion of the Director of Environmental health, taking the entertainments offered at the premises as a whole, the commercial element appears to be more than merely occasional'.

Conclusions

20. The applications submitted by NKAT in 1997 and 1998 included no reference to the events staged at the premises by the Mean Fiddler Organisation. We have reviewed the explanations provided by NKAT in respect of this omission. We can appreciate that the Director of the Trust could genuinely believe that, taken as a whole, the use of the premises at that time was not inconsistent with a wide interpretation of the aims of the Trust. However a rigorous review by the Council of the application and the use of the premises would have revealed the extent of the commercial use of the premises.

21. The process for considering partial fee waivers for public entertainment licenses, prior to 1998, was not sufficiently robust to ensure rigorous and consistent scrutiny of applications. This was recognised by officers during 1997/98 and as a result they have tightened up the applications procedure, clarified the criteria for discretionary relief and appointed additional staff to allow in-performance checks by licensing enforcement officers.

22. We consider the current procedures to be adequate and have no recommendations to make in this respect.

The auditor's report continues >>>>