Scottish Grocer has been highlighting the forthcoming deadline for refresher training for personal licence holders for several months. In part that’s because there was confusion late last year about all the applicable dates. Here Andrew Hunter of Harper Macleod explains the vital importance of completing the training.
What do you need to know about refresher training?
All personal licence holders are required to undertake refresher training every five years. The first deadlines for undertaking the required training and for submitting evidence to the licensing board that granted your licence are approaching.
Why is this so important?
Failure to complete the training and submit evidence to the licensing board within the prescribed timescales could be fatal to your career and/or business.
If you fail to comply with the requirements, the licensing board must revoke your personal licence. The board has no discretion. It cannot choose not to revoke your licence, regardless of how good or experienced a licensee you are or how important the licence is to your business.
If your personal licence is revoked, you cannot reapply for a personal licence for five years and therefore cannot be a designated premises licence manager during that period.
Therefore it is critical that you check your personal licence and both undertake the refresher training and submit evidence to the licensing board in time. Licensing boards will send reminders but don’t count on receiving notification and remember that completing the training and gaining the certificate by your deadline and then presenting the evidence to the board by that deadline is all down to you!
What does all of this mean for you?
• If your personal licence was granted and issued before 1 September 2009 (and that includes all personal licence holders who had their licence granted in the transition period) you must complete refresher training by no later than 31 August 2014 and submit evidence of that training to the licensing board which issued your personal licence not later than 1 December 2014.
• If your personal licence was granted and issued after 1 September 2009, then you must undertake refresher training before the expiry of the five-year period starting with the date of issue of the personal licence and must submit evidence of passing that course not later than three months after that expiry date.
For example, if your personal licence was issued on 1 February 2011 then the refresher training must be completed by 31 January 2016 and evidence submitted to the board that issued the licence by no later than 1 May 2016.
