Licensing Qualifications

March 2013

Launch of Specifications for the Revised SCPLH and SCPLH Refresher Qualifications

People 1st, in partnership with Scottish Government have now launched the specifications for the revised Scottish Certificate for Personal Licence Holders (SCPLH) qualification and the new Refresher qualification.  A Training Delivery and Assessment Strategy has also been introduced that anyone involved in the delivery of these qualifications must comply with.  These documents can be viewed at: SCPLH Website.  In particular, we would draw your attention to page 3 of the Training Delivery and Assessment Strategy, which sets out occupational and qualification requirements that tutors will have to meet from August 2013.

January 2013

SCPLH and SCPLH Refresher Qualifications and Transition Period

People 1st, the Sector Skills Council for Hospitality, Passenger Transport, Travel and Tourism, has been working with the Scottish Government to update the Personal Licence Holder qualification and help devise the refresher qualification. This work is coming to a conclusion and the outputs will be announced by early March 2013. 

Personal licence holders must undertake refresher training every 5 years to ensure their licences remain valid. They must also produce evidence of this to the licensing board that originally issued their licence 5 years after the date the licence was issued (with a three month grace period).  Achievement of the PLH Refresher qualification, which is currently under development, will be the only form of evidence accepted by licensing boards as meeting the mandatory refresher training requirement.

• If licence holders do not produce evidence of achieving the PLH Refresher qualification within this time period, their personal licences will be revoked. 
•  If a premises manager has their personal licence revoked then the sale of alcohol will no longer be permitted in their premises.
• If personal licence holders, who are not premises managers, have their licences revoked, they will no longer be allowed to authorise alcohol sales in the absence of the premises manager.

Although a number of personal licence holders were trained, gained their PLH qualification and were issued with personal licences during the transitional period of 01 March 2008 – 31 August 2009, the Scottish Government have advised that licensing boards will treat these as being issued on 01 September 2009. Therefore, all those who were issued with personal licences between 01 March 2008 and 01 Sept 2009, will have to undertake refresher training, and submit evidence of this to their licensing board by 01 December 2014.

Personal licence holders who were issued with their licences after 01 September will have until 5 years (and 3 months) from the date of issue to provide evidence of undertaking refresher training, i.e. if a personal licence was issued on, for example 01 June 2012, then the proof that the refresher training has been undertaken must be submitted to the same licensing board by 01 September 2017.

July 2012

The Scottish Government has now initiated the formal review of the Licensing Qualifications and this is being led by the Sector Skills Council People 1st.  Although it is likely to be a couple of months before concrete information on the revised qualifications is available we thought it would be useful to provide a brief update on how things look like they are shaping up.

There are a number of groups established to support the review process including an employer/trade body group, awarding body group and a project steering group. We are involved in both the awarding body group and the steering group. We are also aware that the consultant undertaking the detailed work of the review has already engaged directly with a number of providers as part of the consultation process.

To date then, the following looks like the most likely scenario (we would stress that this is subject to further consultation with the trade).

The PLH qualification

• the separate on and off sales training specifications will be merged into a single PLH specification
• the new/revised areas of law likely to come into the specification are:  
  • Licensing Legislation:
    • Alcohol Etc. Act 2010
      • Age verification policy
      • Drinks promotions
      • Pricing on alcohol
      • Licensing policy statements
      • Chief constables reports
    • Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010
      • Reintroduction of vicarious liability
      • Defence of due diligence
      • Various modifications (sec 179 - 198)
    • The Licensing (Mandatory Conditions No 2) (Scotland) (SSI 546)
      • Changes re training records
      • Display of alcohol
      • Training record form
    • The Licensing (Mandatory Conditions) (Scotland) Regulations 2009 (SSI No 270)
      • Changes to rules on Visitor Attractions
    • The Licensing (Mandatory Conditions) (Scotland) Regulations 2007 (SSI No 457)
      • Notices - admission of persons under 18
      • Baby changing facilities
    • Licensing (Liquor) The Licensing (Minor Variations) (Scotland) regulations 2011 (SSI)
      • Variations to be treated as minor variations

Minimum price of alcohol at £0.50 per unit information will be included as the legislative process unfolds.

• a single unit and PLH award specification will likely result which all Awarding bodies will base their PLH qualification on

Refresher PLH qualification

• at the moment it looks like the refresher requirement for the PLH qualification will be a further half day course at the end of which candidates would sit the same exam (or rather an exam to the same specification) as the full PLH qualification.
• The Scottish Government has made no statement yet on whether there will be a refresher requirement for staff training

Assessment Strategy

An assessment strategy will be developed by People 1st. This will govern key aspects of how the PLH qualifications will operate and all Awarding Bodies will have to comply with the requirements set out in it if they wish to run the qualifications. Most of the areas included in the strategy will be familiar to you from our current operational handbook.

Timescale

It is anticipated the revised training and qualification specification should be completed by the end of September and the revised qualifications ready by April 2013 to be in place for the expiry of the current qualifications in July 2013.

Once the detail of the revised qualifications is established we plan to hold an update/network event for centres to support the implementation of the revised qualifications.