Morrisons and Christmas Day

mackemdave

Signs in the carpark at my local Morrisons in Northampton are advising people that they intend to go to court to have the restriction of selling alcohol on Christmas Day lifted......Does this mean that we can expect Morrisons to start opening on Christmas Day....Out of the big four Supermarkets,Morrisons would be the last one I would have thought to want to open on Christmas Day.

izzitme

They are doing the same in Shrewsbury but have told the local press that they have no intention of opening on Christmas Day. If that is true, why bother applying for a change in licensing conditions?

cuddlymarm

The problem is that if they do manage to get permission to open on Xmas Day the other supermarkets will follow suit. Which then means some poor people have got to work on Xmas Day (and funnily enough it won't be the senior staff)

mackemdave

There are two Morrisons in Northampton and it seems that only one of them is applying to lift this restriction.....Very Strange

Storck

If a store is over a certain size, think it is the same as the restrictions for Sunday, then they legally can not open on Christmas day even if they have a license to sell alcohol. They may legally have the right to sell alcohol but not until the law on Christmas opening is changed.

FilthyLuka

so why waste time fighting for the right to sell alcohol when they are closed?

Is this for petrol stations maybe??

Is it so they can sell past midnight on xmas eve??

Storck

Must be petrol stations, never thought about that. It would depend if the alcohol licence takes in the petrol station.

Main stores can not be open after midnight on Christmas Eve.

juno

Petrol stations aren't allowed to sell alcohol anyway

Storck

juno wrote: »

Petrol stations aren't allowed to sell alcohol anyway

Why not?

The law changed years ago allowing them to do so. Haven't you seen those Tesco Express sites with a petrol station?

Slats

All the petrol stations near me sell alcohol too. Been like that for a while!

juno

Storck wrote: »

Why not?

The law changed years ago allowing them to do so. Haven't you seen those Tesco Express sites with a petrol station?

Well, when I got my Personal Licence last year it hadn't changed.

176 Prohibition of alcohol sales at service areas, garages etc.

(1) No premises licence, club premises certificate or temporary event notice has effect to authorise the sale by retail or supply of alcohol on or from excluded premises.
(2) In this section “excluded premises” means—
(a) premises situated on land acquired or appropriated by a special road authority, and for the time being used, for the provision of facilities to be used in connection with the use of a special road provided for the use of traffic of class I (with or without other classes); or
(b) premises used primarily as a garage or which form part of premises which are primarily so used.
(3) The Secretary of State may by order amend the definition of excluded premises in subsection (2) so as to include or exclude premises of such description as may be specified in the order.
(4) For the purposes of this section—
(a) “special road” and “special road authority” have the same meaning as in the Highways Act 1980 (c. 66), except that “special road” includes a trunk road to which (by virtue of paragraph 3 of Schedule 23 to that Act) the provisions of that Act apply as if the road were a special road,
(b) “class I” means class I in Schedule 4 to the Highways Act 1980 as varied from time to time by an order under section 17 of that Act, but if that Schedule is amended by such an order so as to add to it a further class of traffic, the order may adapt the reference in subsection (2)(a) to traffic of class I so as to take account of the additional class, and
(c) premises are used as a garage if they are used for one or more of the following—
(i) the retailing of petrol,
(ii) the retailing of derv,
(iii) the sale of motor vehicles,
(iv) the maintenance of motor vehicles.

There you go; from the Licensing Act.