(a)

considered the report from the Director of Public Health;

(b)

heard from the applicant’s Licensing Manager as follows -

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Tesco had 2800 stores and 300,000 colleagues across the UK, made up of Extra stores, Superstores and Express convenience stores; this application was for a convenience Express store; it would be used as a top up shop with small baskets rather than a full shop, so it would hold a limited and targeted range of goods which would reflect the local community; alcohol was a small part of this range; the shop would have 20 colleagues and three managers, consisting of full and part time staff; roles were offered to the local community prior to going out to the wider area, so the store would have a mixed of experienced and new colleagues;

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the store would stock a selected range of alcohol with spirits kept behind the counter; the manager of the store had yet to be recruited;

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Tesco operated a Good Neighbour policy and had been involved in 50 projects; £180,000 had been given through its community grants which had delivered 128,000 meals; the store manager would be happy to join the local resident groups and would hope that the resident who had made the objection could contact them, once the store opened in order to discuss their concerns;

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there had been no representations from any of the responsible authorities; Tesco worked closely with Mr Seymour, Police Licensing Officer in Plymouth, who would contact the applicant if there were any problems in the area; nationally they had great relationships with the responsible authorities and other retailers and had also produced alcohol sales and product guidance for use by smaller independent retailers to promote the responsible sale of alcohol by all;

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Tesco supported the Portman drink awareness initiative; the company’s training records were endorsed by BII and had a documented and audited compliance route of induction training which also included check out and age restricted sales training, as well as training on the licensing objectives; the training was refreshed on a twice yearly basis;

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Tesco operated a challenge 25 policy and also an ‘eyes wide open’ policy whereby the manager would support the cashiers in any decision they made to refuse a sale of alcohol; training was also included conflict training; there was a check out till prompt which locked the screen to prevent further purchases until ID had been verified (only Home Office approved ID was acceptable);

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sales staff training included what to look out for when an individual was buying alcohol for younger people outside of shops; there was an internal communications system which had the ability to send a message to all stores in Plymouth if there was an incident; security in the stores would be an up to date CCTV system which linked to a monitored office based hub; there was the provision to make safeguarding announcements and staff were equipped with panic alarms;

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target, high value items were security tagged and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 24.