Anti-social behaviour and the Licensing Act

The Council has now adopted cumulative impact zones for Richmond and Twickenham town centres. As part of our commitment to improve the towns the council will continue to monitor reported incidents of anti-social behaviour and low-level nuisance. How this can be recorded and background information to the zones is shown below.

Cumulative impact can arise where there are a significant number of licensed premises concentrated in one area. It is the disturbance or low level nuisance caused by customers of licensed premises in an area wider than that immediately identifiable as being linked to specific premises. The policy acts as a brake on new or materially enlarged existing licensed business within the area of its operation. It creates a presumption that such new applications would be refused, unless the applicant can show that the proposal will not harm the objectives of the council’s licensing policy.  

Much of this impact/disturbance (noise on the street, anti social behaviour, shouting, swearing, urination in public, littering) may be relatively low level disturbance, not of a criminal nature or will have dispersed fairly quickly and therefore is not reported to the police or council. This behaviour can none the less be annoying to residents and some businesses. It can disrupt sleep, or create an atmosphere in and around a town centre where there is a fear of crime or reluctance to use town centre facilities after particular times. It can take place sufficiently far from the licensed premises that no specific link can be made to particular premises.  Such incidents have therefore gone unreported in the past.

Some specific details of the caller and where they experienced the incident will be required to establish the geographical extent of cumulative impact, the frequency of reporting, as well as the nature of the occurrences. This will enable the information to be validated and thereby withstand potential challenge while helping shape the future direction of the licensing policy.

Please note that reporting such incidents to the web site will not generate any response to those incidents. This is purely a recording mechanism that such incidents took place. The information will be downloaded regularly. The results will be reported and will add to the evidence from the police and other enforcement bodies to give a better picture of the extent or otherwise of cumulative impact around our town centres.

Report anti-social behaviour