WESLEY FOSTER CREIGHTON Applicant, KENNETH CROWE AND OTHERS, Objectors.

Refusal of an Article 6(1)(a) licence for premises at Lackaboy, Enniskillen.

Schedule 1, paragraph 1(b) of the Licensing (Northern Ireland) Order 1990 – obligation to display notice of the application on or near the premises. The premises to which the application related consisted of a former builder’s yard which was unoccupied and entry to which was secured. The typewritten notice was displayed on a window possibly as much as twenty-five feet from the public road and could not be read from that distance.

Held.

The requirement to display the notice was mandatory. R -v- Newcastle Gaming Committee [1977] 3 AER 961 considered. The notice had to be in a position where it could be seen by interested members of the public and at the very least where it could be identified as a notice of application under the Order. If the premises are fenced off in order to comply with the purpose of the Order the notice must be affixed to or be placed close enough to the fence to be seen and recognised as a notice in relation to an application under the Licensing Order. In the present case the notice did not comply with these requirements and on that basis the application would be dismissed.

Inadequacy – vicinity considered. Donnelly -v- Regency Hotel Ltd and others. HC [1985] NI 144, [1985] 5 NIJB 27 applied. As the applicant had failed to prove that the number of existing premises in the vicinity was inadequate the application was dismissed on this ground also.

Judge Smyth QC – Enniskillen County Court – 7/7/1994.