UK Wine merchants supplying a diverse choice
of quality wines from all over the world
Exemplary personal service where the customer and traditional values still count
ASDW is concerned about the impact of The Licensing Act 2003 on its members' fledgling businesses that seek to fill the gaps between supermarket shelves and provide diversity and choice to the British public.
Please email or write to your MP in support of the ASDW
Mr / Ms ..MP
Member of Parliament for ..
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA
To identify your MP visit http://www.writetothem.com
UK MPs email addresses are of a standard form so James Purnell's address is purnellj@parliament.uk
Please send us a copy of the letter for our information and/or inform us so as to add to our MPs contacted list. mplist@asdw.org.uk
..........................................
It is bad form to send identical letters or petitions to MPs. Regular campaigners advise that these will be ignored. So please compose a letter in your own words using the bullet points below.
Bullet Points
1> Reference: Licensing Act 2003
2> Draw attention to the open letter sent to Mr James Purnell, Minister for broadcasting, tourism, licensing and the creative industries. Department of Culture, Media, and Sport by The Association of Small Direct WineMerchants (ASDW) http://openletter.asdw.org.uk
3> The Association of Small Direct WineMerchants is a group of micro start-up businesses struggling to provide quality and diverse wines and competing with the resources of Billion Pound profitable hyper-markets and retail chains.
4> Many of us do not have a local independent wine store - competition from BOGOFS and supermarket loss leaders have forced most of the High Street independents out of business.
5> However in their stead has risen a number of internet based merchants operated by enthusiasts that give us access to small production and specialist wines.
6> These businesses run by real people often from home seek to fill the gaps between supermarket shelves and provide diversity and choice to the British public.
7>
Charging is excessive for a
Premises License especially based on the risk to the public as nobody visits the
internet retailers and purchases are considered and not impulse buys and
delivery in practice is at least a day away perhaps much longer.
8>
We are charged
based on the entire rateable value of a warehouse complex even if only a few
square metres are rented making costs higher than that of a hypermarket with
perhaps several thousand times the sales.
9>
We are at a
disadvantage compared with Calais to Cape Town based internet merchants who will
remain unlicensed.
10> We have to place a costly
advertisement in a local paper. Given that stock may be at homes this
announcement in itself could lead to a breach of the peace.
11>
Agree that the Personal License
requirement is quite sound and will ensure that internet merchants do not sell
to minors.
12> Pick up a few more points from the letter below
13> Appeal to your MP to defend the interests of the wine drinking consumer as opposed to the binge drinker by lending his/her support to the ASDW letter.
14> seek action: All that is needed is for the Minister to rule that merchants who do not have consumer accessible premises do not need a premises licence.
click for PDF file of letter below
FOR RELEASE 19th May 2005 12:00
Open letter to James Purnell, Minister for broadcasting, tourism, licensing and the creative industries. Department of Culture, Media, and Sport
Dear Sir,
Re: Licensing Act 2003
Deep concerns exist amongst the community of small online wine retailers about the Licensing Act 2003, and the damaging way in which it is being interpreted and operated by many Local Licensing Authorities. Whilst supporting the primary objectives of the Act in regulating establishments serving alcohol to the public, we feel it fails to take into account the needs of our completely different type of business. This "one size fits all" approach is flawed, for numerous reasons.
The Act clearly targets issues arising from modern-day drinking culture, related to safety and public disorder fuelled by city-centre binge-drinking, and public nuisance caused by noise from entertainment, cooking smells, parking problems, etc. These issues have one thing in common the consumer visits the premises. Alcohol is consumed on those premises, or taken away in person, by the consumer, to be consumed elsewhere.
Online retailers are essentially mail-order only businesses that do not strictly have "premises". Stock is kept in bonded warehouses, small storage facilities, or their personal homes and the public is not invited into these places. Alcohol is delivered to the customer's home or place of business. Individual drinks are not sold and tastings, if offered at all, are by invitation and limited in amount. The premises license application form contains a clear presumption of attendance by the public to "premises", covering issues such as fire and health and safety, and requires the submission of detailed building plans. Yet no customer ever visits our premises. It is nonsensical to consider there are "premises" to be licensed. The issue of whether a merchant is a "fit and proper person" to sell alcohol is dealt with by the mechanism of the Personal Licence, which we support. We are disadvantaged relative to overseas online merchants supplying UK customers; a Calais or even Cape Town based online merchant would not be covered by The Act. We urge that an exemption be granted from the need for a premises licence for mail-order companies.
Moreover, distinct problems exist with the Act's implementation, which is inconsistent across the country. While some licensing authorities have taken the practical approach and agreed that no premises license is required under some of the circumstances outlined above, many have not. Examples are emerging of authorities concluding that merchants storing alcohol in large communal warehouses, even if in a self-contained space occupying only a tiny fraction of the whole warehouse, must pay a license fee based on the rateable value of the entire warehouse. Any common-sense approach would base the cost on a pro-rata surface area. This interpretation obliges merchants to license up to 1000 times their storage space. This is far from hypothetical - in one particular case, a small online retailer with a storage unit of only 65 square feet has been told he will have to pay the same fee as a local Hypermarket, and three times the fee for typical local pubs. This results in disproportionately high fees for small merchants, and in some cases the local authority obtaining multiple fees for the same premises (when more than one business stores alcohol in the warehouse). Again there are real-life examples of this situation. This is neither reasonable nor equitable.
Small mail order wine merchants offer a real service to the public; we provide access to quality products from small innovative producers and less well-known regions not serviced by mainstream High Street suppliers and supermarkets. Many of us are micro-businesses, attempting to establish ourselves in an already difficult business environment. For us the proposed premises licence costs are crippling.
We do not believe that sufficient consideration has been given to us by this Act. If, as it states, the Government wants small businesses to thrive, such unforeseen inconsistencies must be addressed and resolved before the Act is fully implemented. If not, the addition of these substantial (and completely unnecessary) overheads would make it increasingly difficult for us to compete, and would threaten the very existence of small businesses such as ours. This would be to the advantage of nobody; the merchants themselves, a public seeking diversity, or indeed the image of a Government which has stated publicly its support for small businesses.
We therefore urge the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to urgently review the issues we have raised, and to take swift appropriate corrective action to eliminate these injustices.
Yours sincerely
Krystyna and Jim Monks, Decanter Wines www.decanterwines.co.uk
Ben Henshaw, Indigo Wine www.indigowine.com
Leon Stolarski, Leon Stolarski Fine Wines www.lsfinewines.co.uk
Peter Bamford, Modern French Wines www.modernfrenchwine.co.uk
Nick Dobson, Nick Dobson Wines www.nickdobsonwines.co.uk
James Bercovici, The Big Red Wine Company www.bigredwine.co.uk
Bernard Caille, The Original Wine Company www.originalwine.com
Paula Sindberg, The Ultimate Wine Company www.ultimatewines.co.uk
Warren Edwardes, Wine for Spice www.wineforspice.com
19 May 2005
. ENDS .
The
above list of names was at the date of the letter 19 May 2005. Full
current list of
ASDW supports
