HOTEL LICENCES Wider Power For Commission Urged

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30973, 1 February 1966, Page 1

HOTEL LICENCES Wider Power For Commission Urged

The Licensing Control Commission should have power to transfer hotel licences without being defeated by consideration of those who had neither status nor interest in the distribution of liquor, said Mr J. G. Leggat, counsel for the Canterbury Hotels’ Association, when he adressed the commission yesterday in Christchurch.

Mr Leggat, speaking at the resumed review of 100 Christchurch and Mid-Canterbury hotel licences, referred to the “problems associated with the removal of licences, and therefore the redistribution of them.”

After speaking of the problems raised by town-

planning legislation, Mr Leggat said that the commission itself had referred to the question in its annual report.

His association was likewise alive to the difficulties which confronted the commission. and supported the hint in the report that the commission's powers to grant transfers should be extended, so that they might not be defeated by a consideration of principles which could be invoked by persons who otherwise would have neither status nor interest in the distribution of liquor. “It is not too much to suppose that this commission might reasonably be entrusted with a proper discretion in adjudicating on the suitability of sites with a proper regard for preserving the harmony and amenities of the surroundings and the localities to which it is proposed to shift them.” said Mr Leggat. “To have two statutory bodies adjudicating on the same matter and viewing the same matter from differing standpoints and in the light of different representations from different parties with differing interests is an unnecessary redundancy. “It does not promote what is a long-standing need in the community, or what is believed to be the firmly-held view of the commission as to the need to redistribute licences, so many of which are conglomerated in the city, or near city limits.” I