No defence

Whilst I have expressed my concerns about the information presented to the recent Licensing Panel of Swindon Borough Council, and find the licensing section of their website aimed more at applicants than objectors, to say, as the New Mechanics’ Institution Preservation Trust does that.

Only as things moved along did we come to understand what was permitted by the Licensing Act. It was our first effort to deal with licensing under the Act.

is no defence. The trust is a campaigning organisation. It has played the planning laws more many years; it knows how regulatory bodies in this country work. If you want to object, you read up on the rules about what you are allowed to object about first. That the owners of the GWR Mechanics’ Institution were successful in their licensing application comes as no surprise.

And for the Trust to claim that they are a ‘similar business’ to that proposed for the Institution by its owners suggests that the Trust have forgotten about all those differences they objected to so vociferously in the earlier planning applications.