Licence renewals since January have included a notice saying increases from April 2012 will be 6.4%. This is based on the consumer price index of July 2011 (4.4%) plus 2%.

NABO is not aware of the customary announcement of these increases. BW have referred us to the press statement of November 2010, which indicated that their business plan allowed for increases at this level for 2012 and 2013. You can read this here.

BW’s last public consultation on leisure licences closed just twelve months ago in January 2011. They have been much too busy to close this out so we have to piece together the answers from other sources. This consultation and the similar one for commercial licences held in the same period are shown on the BW web site as clsoed and the report “pending”.  All this can be seen here in the unfortunately titled BW web pages, “Listening to You”. Listening, but not giving feeding back.

The papers under the grouping for the HM Government Code of Practice gives some help here. In a paragraph talking about producing a summary of responses are these words:

This is a vital part of the consultation process – providing a summary of the responses submitted and stating how the responses received will affect policy development is key to the integrity of the whole exercise. When done well it is really appreciated by those who took the time to submit responses. When done badly or not at all it undermines the whole process and risks losing goodwill that might be required in future consultation exercises.

Nicely put.

NABO will continue to ask the questions.

You can read the BW January 2012 notice here.