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What Legal Rules govern the committee?

When considering applications the Committee is required to act as a 'quasi-judicial' body. There are certain fundamental rules of administrative law that govern the Committee's workings as follows:

NATURAL JUSTICE

The Committee will actively encourage hearings in person and allow applicants, objectors and other interested parties to make representations. Applicants or licence holders are able to be accompanied and represented by a legal adviser or some other person, eg a friend. The Committee's procedures will reflect the standards "that any reasonable person would expect to see applied". All Committee members will receive copies of all documents and other submissions to be considered and will hear all the arguments before reaching a conclusion.

EXERCISE OF DISCRETION

Many statutes allow decisions of the Committee to be made using a wide discretion. This must be a real exercise of discretion and based on what the law says we can consider in any one subject and not, for example, to make licensing decisions based on political or moral grounds. Equally, on matters of policy, the Committee must be prepared to adopt a flexible attitude and, on occasion, may consider applications that do not comply with policy considerations for individual licensing matters.

BIAS AND FAIRNESS

Committee members are bound by standing orders and national codes of conduct. Members must not prejudge or show bias in any matter and must declare pecuniary interests at the start of every Committee meeting. The Committee comprises of experienced councillors who, where possible, do not have interests in licensing matters which are likely to debar them from consideration of, or voting on, any particular issue.