Hotels Dispute 'Deadline'

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31989, 16 May 1969, Page 1

Hotels Dispute ' Deadline '

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, May 15.

Representatives of hotel owners claimed tonight they have until June 30 to seek extensions to temporary hotel licences, in spite of a warning by the Licensing Control Commission that tomorrow is the final deadline and that hotels without extensions will be closed on July 1.

Earlier tonight the secretary of the commission (Mr E. M. Basil-Jones) said it was “quite on the cards” that the police would close as many as 200 hotels on July 1. Mr Basil-Jones said provisional hotel premises licences, on which about 400 hotels work, would expire on June 30. By tonight 200 hotels had not applied for extensions to their provisional licences.

He said the deadline for extensions was tomorrow, May 16. But senior officials of the Hotel Association and of the national council, representing hotels and breweries, said the 1962 Sale of Liquor Act gave hotels until June 30 to apply for extended provisional licences.

Mr Basil-Jones said the act had given all hotels until June 30 to make improve-

ments necessary to bring them up to standard. Of New Zealand’s 1104 hotels, about 700 had been granted hotel premises licences. The other 400, which had not complied with the commission’s requirements,' had been given provisional licences and told to make certain improvements. In March the commission had written to all hotels using provisional licences, giving them until tomorrow to apply for extensions. There could be “a swag of applications” in the mail tomorrow, he said. Mr J. J. Williams, chief executive of the Hotel Association, said the act set down no date for final applications and the commission had no legal power to exclude applications received between tomorrow and June 30. Mr Williams said the Hotel Association supported the commission in seeking early application, and had been to “no end of trouble” to ensure that hotel owners knew what was required of them.