The Soho sex shop case highlights the need for an urgent review of the licensing fee regime, says Philip Kolvin QC
A case which started out as a squabble over licence fees for Soho sex shops has the potential to affect fees for licences and other authorisations for all manner of service activities. The issue came to the fore in the ground-breaking judgment of the Court of Appeal in R (Hemming) v Westminster City Council [2013] EWCA Civ 591.
Hemming
The background to Hemming was that sex shops were paying Westminster City Council £29,102 per year for a sex establishment licence under the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982. The operators served freedom of information requests, replies to which revealed that the overwhelming bulk of their fees was being used to fund prosecutions of illegal operators.
After three years of litigation, the Court of Appeal, led by the Master of the Rolls Lord Dyson, ruled that basing licence fees on such enforcement costs was illegal. It falls foul of the Services Directive
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