New licensing policy aimed at protection of women and girls is approved

“We can never do enough to protect women and girls – but this new policy sets the right tone.”

Councillors sitting on Swindon Borough Council’s Licensing Committee agreed with the authority’s licensing manager Jason Kirkwood and voted unanimously to adopt a new statement of licensing policy.

The council is obliged to update its policy every five years and the new policy has been beefed up to make the prevention of violence against women and girls specifically a higher priority, as well as incorporating lessons learned after the Manchester Arena bombing of 2017.

Mr Kirkwood said: “We have a thriving pub watch scheme, the police and the council run a Licensing Security and Vulnerability Initiative, which licensed premises sign up to, which is all about keeping people safe in venues; we provide Welfare and Vulnerability Engagement training, to venues that support Ask for Angela, we have taxi marshals working at night.

“All these things do a lot to protect women and girls in the town’s night -time economy.”

Added to the new policy is a whole section on spiking of drinks which says the proprietors of licensed premises should offer anti-spiking measures, such as drink covers, train door and bar staff to be aware and to report all suspected spiking incidents to the council’s Local Drug Information Reporting System and relevant authorities.

Following the implementation of The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, brought in after the Manchester Arena bombing, the mangers of premises putting on events for more than 800 people  will have to “implement appropriate, reasonably practicable public protection measures to reduce vulnerability to terrorism and the risk of harm” and to “document these measures, including an assessment of how they reduce vulnerability and risk.”

As part of the new policy, the council has set out an ideal template for premises to be able to get a licence.

They include: employing licensed door supervisors, the use of CCTV, a challenge 25 policy and refusals book, incident logs and staff training, measures to prevent noise and disturbance of neighbours and for shops not selling single bottles or cans of drink, or beer, lager or cider stronger than 8.5 per cent alcohol by volume.

The committee’s vice-chairman Councillor Vijay Manro said: “These conditions help us, and if there are objections to an application will show us what we can do to mitigate those issues.”

The new statement of licensing policy will now have to be endorsed by the full council before being put into practice.